Enterprise Quality Start with Quality to Finish with Quality: Early Involvement Sets the Stage The best way to achieve quality is by incorporating it into products and services from the beginning of design. Quality fuels sustainability by evaluating and improving efficiency, reducing waste and improving management processes. For years, design and proposal teams in Phantom Works — a Boeing organization that innovates the next generation of aerospace and defense solutions — have been using Early Quality Involvement (EQI) methods and tools to ensure that quality is incorporated from the start. This helps to identify quality issues, concerns and risks that may surface and to prevent them from happening. With Phantom Works ’ success, teams are replicating EQI across Defense, Space & Security (BDS). BDS Total Quality is driving EQI methods and tools across BDS and integrates them into the Enterprise Standard Gated Process by which development programs are shepherded from initial concepts through deployment. All BDS Total Quality employees are asked to take a 10-minute trainer on EQI. The EQI Toolset lays out a series of checklists and templates for program managers and others to follow as they pass through the first stages of new-product development, helping them identify crucial issues that could crop up and plan ahead for them, said Clark Rucker, Manager of BDS Integrated Quality. Rucker served on the Phantom Works Quality team when EQI was designed. “ The intent of EQI, then and now, is not to correct quality issues, but to avoid them in the first place, ” Rucker said. Strengthening System Drives Higher Quality in Building and Delivering Products The Boeing Quality Management System (QMS) is an established business management system meant to ensure customer, regulatory and business requirements are met. In 2021, the company continued to strengthen its system through application of the One Boeing Production System and lean principles, using new industry assessment tools and operating in alignment with a Safety Management System (SMS). QMS and SMS work together and are built into the company’s organizational policies, processes, procedures and resources. They are intended to enable teams to make a perfect copy — conforming and safe — every time. The Boeing QMS is based on AS9100, the internationally recognized and premier aerospace QMS standard. Like other major aerospace manufacturers, Boeing flows down AS9100 certification and compliance requirements to its suppliers to build a quality foundation that enables effective and efficient processes that meet multiple customer, regulatory and business requirements. Boeing St. Louis employee Keith Gallup works on the MQ-25 uncrewed aerial refueling aircraft. (Boeing photo) When I put safety and quality rst, I enable performance. Quality is our customers’ fundamental expectation. I am responsible for the quality of my work. I believe all defects are preventable. Own Quality Each teammate’s contributions to high-quality performance directly relate to the safety and quality of all products and services Boeing delivers. 2022 Sustainability Report 49 Contents People Introduction Communities Operations Reporting Approach & Governance Products & Services