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The purpose of this paper is to review how lean through the Boeing Production System impacted the production of civil aircraft in Boeing.

The paper engages the usage of literature on lean from researchers, book authors and the Boeing Company. These literatures were studied to ascertain why Boeing pursued the lean journey and the transformations it attained.

The outcomes disclose lean offers Boeing an all-inclusive approach in managing the value-stream of a company. It further presents a sustainable business model that prioritizes customer and industry demands, births innovative ways of satisfying them and keeps Boeing in business.

This research is useful to upcoming aircraft manufacturers who seek to optimize their production as well as satisfy their customers.

This paper aims to address the advantage of considering an evolutionary classification scheme for commercial aerospace supply chains. It is an industry wide approach. By going beyond the performance of the single firm and considering the whole supply chain for a product a better understanding of present states and performances of the firms within the chain can be achieved.

The approach is presented as evolutionary steps by introduction of key supply chain characters. These steps are brought together by applying cladistics to classify the evolutionary relationships between supply chain forms.

Key character states define the change of supply chain forms in the evolutionary adaptation to market realities and to proactive responses to increased competition.

The potential benefits of this approach include a benchmark of best practice, a strategic tool for policy development, and the creation of future scenarios.

IT is rather difficult at this time to ascertain whether or not all the problems with which we are confronted in laying out “sub‐merged” engine installations are real or imaginary. We must contemplate the problems that we think exist and attempt solutions based mostly on our own past experience. Very few submerged engine installations have been designed, ground tested, or flown; therefore, actual experience is woefully lacking. The problems which we have encountered have been met while making preliminary designs of several types of advanced aircraft.

Over 120 companies have taken up space at the Asian Aerospace '81, which will present a showcase for the latest developments in the aviation and aero‐engineering industry and a conducive arena for authorities in the industry with interest in the Asia‐Pacific region to meet, discuss and expand their business horizons.

Lord King of Wartnaby, the chairman of British Airways, formally unveiled a commemorative plaque to open a new facility for L.A. Rumbold Ltd.

In the early twenty‐first century organization scholars and managers face an economic outlook full of daunting challenges. With investors, workers, and other stakeholders distressed and hostile toward corporate executives and boards due to recent corporate scandals, the future for many industries and firms appears grim. In what ways can business history help corporate managers and new venture entrepreneurs overcome these leadership challenges? This paper seeks to uncover practices throughout the Boeing Company's management history that offer today's executives and board members numerous examples of industry vision and leadership.

Visionary leadership theory is used to help understand Boeing's actions. A theory of visionary entrepreneurial leadership is proposed based on Boeing's history. Four specific cases of aircraft design and development decisions and actions are presented as examples of executive and board directors' vision and leadership.

Boeing has served as the aircraft industry's innovator and leader for over nine decades by designing and building path‐breaking airplanes when no other aircraft manufacturer would venture similar risks to their reputation and capital. Furthermore, Boeing executives and board directors have repeatedly made risky decisions that – if the prototype literately crashed and burned – would probably bankrupt the company. Management's vision was always on the next great airplane, never on individual image or personal wealth.

Future research directions are presented suggesting a focus on firm executives and boards of directors' decisions and how these decisions influence industry wide innovation and development.

The paper analyses the leadership attributes of Boeing executives over the last nine decades.