The Boeing Co. Allen Haggerty is vice president and general manager of engineering for Boeing's Military Aircraft and Missile Systems Group. He discusses the importance of implementing lean in the early design and engineering phases of new product development. Here are some of the questions he answered: How hard it is to go from the Toyota Production System to Boeing? How much harder is it to adopt lean in the engineering arena as opposed to production where you can easily measure flow and takt time and the other lean principles? What do you do to get lean principles involved early in the design of an aircraft or complex military product? How hard is it for you to address the role of the operator and engineer in a lean enterprise model? Have the lean principles totally penetrated up and down the entire culture of Boeing? In order for lean to work, how important is it to have buy-in from the very top? In the lean environment, how do you wrestle with problems associated with integration of all these software systems? Is the Catia design program the foundation of your lean engineering effort? The big issue in manufacturing today is the fact that the OEMs are no longer manufacturers. Is that a model that Boeing is working toward? Given your success with lean, is it worth buying out mom- and pop-shops, lean out their processes and bring that production in-house? How far along are you in propagating the lean concept through your supply chain? Is lean making a difference in Boeing's bottom line profitability? Do you have some examples of lean successes? Is lean easier to do on a greenfield plant? How does the lean approach fit in with the problems with Milspecs and quality inspectors and the whole procurement system within Department of Defense? Is that a tough fit? Have you seen a change in the number of military inspectors on your military production lines as a result of your lean implementations? How do you make sure your suppliers are adopting lean principles? What incentives do you have in place for workers to adopt lean practices and behavior? To view questions from other interviews in Lean Machines, Click Here. Click Here to order a copy of Lean Machines.