Brian Smale
Alan Mulally
Boeing Commercial Airplanes
Immediately after the September 11 terrorist attacks, Boeing Commercial Airplane CEO Alan R. Mulally had difficult decisions to make. The attacks had sent the U.S. airline business into a tailspin. Ultimately, Mulally had to renegotiate delivery schedules for some 500 airplanes, cut jet production by more than half, and fire 27,000 workers. To make things worse, European rival Airbus had supplanted Boeing as the world’s No. 1 commercial jet builder and was winning orders for its new A380 super-jumbo jetliner.
Since those days, Mulally, 60, has engineered a remarkable recovery. During the downturn, he focused religiously on cutting waste and streamlining Boeing’s antiquated and inefficient airplane production lines. He then bet the company’s future on a set of new technologies that are now turning Boeing’s superefficient 787 Dreamliner into the hottest-selling new jetliner in history. Next on Mulally’s agenda was launching a new version of the venerable 747 Jumbo Jet to compete with the A380. The result: Boeing has captured 800 orders thus far in 2005, compared with 191 last year.
Sure, these successes come in the midst of an industry recovery. And Mulally did fail to avert a 25-day strike by the International Association of Machinists. Even so, he gets credit not only for rescuing the fabled commercial airplane division during its darkest hours but for putting it back on the path to prosperity.