Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg’s departure sends a message that the troubled company is going back to basics. But in this case, the basics have less to do with nuts and bolts, and more to do with information.
Information technology rather than flawed hardware has been at the root of Boeing’s most recent troubles — including the problematic automated control system that’s thought to have caused two catastrophic 737 MAX accidents.
Although the roots of that problem predate Muilenburg’s ascension to the CEO role in 2015, Boeing’s board of directors had clearly lost patience with the way he handled efforts to recover from the crisis. That has to do with information technology, as well as plain old information.
