Boeing Company is an American multinational defense and aerospace corporation founded in 1916 by William E. Boeing in Seattle, Washington. It is the world's leading aerospace organization and the largest manufacturer of military aircraft and commercial jetliners combined (Sanga, 2015).
Lockheed Martin is an American defense aerospace advanced securities and Security Company with international interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Company with Martin Marietta in 1995. It is among the largest companies in the defense, aerospace advanced technology, and security (Benusa et al., 2012).
Operational management is an essential aspect of a company, and it needs to be addressed well since it is the key to firm's success. The management needs to carefully plan all the operation of the company to prepare the individuals in settling and handling the issue. The strength of a firm is measured by the challenges it has encountered and the way in which they have resolved it (Bhimani, Ncube, & Sivabalan, 2015).
The management operations of Boeing has enabled the firm to remain strong over the years and countering the risks that might have occurred. Boeing's operational management involves avoiding difficulties or problems by formulating solutions and addressing these beforehand so that when the problem occurs, the operations management will easily execute them before incurring many losses.
They also utilize their manufacturing and production pathways. The cost of production is minimized to get a better result by increasing the revenue of the firm. The company utilizes tools and models to reduce the problems that may be faced due to the size design of their airliners. Also, the operations management use the support system to deal with exact deployment time to increase the effectiveness of the operational decisions involving their aircraft.
Lockheed Martin merger has an effective operations management that leads to its success. It focuses on new market entry strategy, active headcount management as well as cost reduction techniques. International expansion is a major principle of Lockheed Martin Company as it has a series of international initiatives in the U.K, Australia, and the Middle East (Benusa et al., 2012).
Operational management of the firm strives to cut costs approaches such as enhanced supply management, increases automation of its internal processes, and overhead reduction. The company utilizes its extensive vaults in engineering capabilities, modern manufacturing expertise and intellectual property in reducing its costs to avoid high development costs on its products.
Risk management process has been developed by Lockheed Martin Company for continuous improvement. It has been developed to identify high-risk areas to resolve them earlier. The risks encountered by the firm include changes in aircraft fuel prices, adverse economic conditions, and political instability, perceived safety of aircraft flight and stiff competition from Airbus.
Several airlines realize the importance of risk management to identify and control internal and external risks and eventually manage any potential risks. Boeing Company pursues structured management systems that identifies safety hazards, evaluates potential risks, access the impact of such risks and plan to reduce them to acceptable limits. It includes defining controls, documenting and accessing risks, managing audits, and assessments and implementing remedial plans and recommendations.
Aviation and travel industry safety is increasingly becoming controversial and complex. Incidents of increase in the occurrence of accidents in aircraft have raised safety concerns among the airlines, air travelers, and the government, and there is a widespread awareness that safety concerns are a delicate issue that cannot be allowed haphazard (Bhimani, Ncube, & Sivabalan, 2015).
For the travel and aviation industry, safety is good and the right thing to do, and it is also the law. The Federal Aviation Agency regulates the airlines and has adopted safety as its core mission. It is mandated to provide the most efficient and safest aerospace system by improving the efficiency and safety of aviation while being responsible to the public and accountable to their customers.
The compliance mandates affect all the business activities of the aviation and travel industry-strategically and operationally. Mandates such as continuous surveillance and Analysis require airlines to have an approach of measuring performance and effectiveness of inspection and maintenance as well as Internal evaluation programs for continuous monitoring of procedures, programs, and processes.
Safety is a victim of profit maximization and cost-cutting by airlines companies since cost measures tend to increase the costs without raising the revenues. Several aviation and travel companies do not spend a cent on safety measures unless forced by the regulations of the law. The safety improvements such as replacements of piston engines by jet engines, more sophisticated air craft control and pilot training are very costly, and many aviation firms do not practice such improvements. Maintenance-related accidents have drastically increased due to maintenance failures such as overwork staff cuts, with engineers under immense pressure to ensure that costs are cut (Sanga, 2015).
Safety audits and controls is a prudent move by the airline authorities to validate the effectiveness of airline compliance by the aviation companies. Audits create the redundancies that make the aviation industry the safest in the world. Safety audits and controls should be conducted regularly to ensure that safety procedures are being followed. Safety controls to ensure timely adherence to audit management, quality mandates including verification, management visibility, and oversight, maintenance practice and enterprise and compliance risk management frameworks.
Conclusion
Airline industry faces numerous safety concerns, cutting concerns and risk management practices. Airline companies should demonstrate safety compliance by conforming to safety standards since it is a very delicate issue in the travel industry. Most airlines rely on safety audits and controls which allow them to focus on safety concern and take immediate actions to correct the problem. Boeing and Lockheed Martin Companies have utilized the operational and risk management techniques to promote safety compliance, reduce costs and effectively safety, quality and risk management.
References
Benusa, T. K., Gottwald, S., Harrison, J. S., & Reed, J. (2012). Lockheed Martin: Dealing with Dependence on a Single Customer.
Bhimani, A., Ncube, M., & Sivabalan, P. (2015). Managing risk in mergers and acquisitions activity: beyond ‘good’and ‘bad’management. Managerial Auditing Journal, 30(2), 160-175.
Sanga, S. (2015). The Contract Frontier: A Study of the Modern Joint Venture. Available at SSRN.
