Kaizen VS. Boeing Failures, Lean Loops & Startup Learning - E630

" We know about the Boeing safety disasters that all of us have been concerned about. One of the issues identified was that for many years Boeing had a strong culture of safety and reliability. Most of us have grown up flying in Boeing planes, and if you and I go on a plane tomorrow, we would not care whether it is a Boeing plane or an Airbus plane. But at one point, we heard a story about a plane where a door, supposedly part of the fuselage, blew out. A teenage university student almost got sucked out and had his shirt ripped off because the air was rushing out. If he had not been wearing his seatbelt, he would have died after being pulled out of the plane. " - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

" What’s interesting is that people rushing to get planes out on time at a cheaper budget ended up costing Boeing much more down the road, with recalls, grounded planes, and multiple investigations. A relatively small decision by the frontline manufacturer caused billions of dollars in damage to Boeing as a company because of this defect. The realization is that from a manufacturing perspective, it is important to be lean, to focus on small improvements, to let the frontline drive those improvements, and to allow production to stop when necessary. " - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

" What’s important is that instead of just building, you build a minimum viable product, the easiest version to test your hypothesis. Then you measure the results—whether people like it, enjoy it, or whether it actually works. You look at the data, learn from it, change from it, get a better idea, and then build again to improve on it. That repeated loop is key, because when you do it faster than your enemy, you defeat your enemy. If another startup takes one month to learn and you take one day, by the end of that month you have learned 30 things more than your enemy. Your rate of learning is your ability to turn this crank over and over again. " - Jeremy Au, Host of BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech Podcast

Jeremy Au shared lessons from Toyota’s Kaizen model, Boeing’s safety lapses, and lean startup methods. He explained why small improvements, frontline empowerment, and rapid iteration matter for both manufacturing and startups. The discussion connected MVP thinking with divergence/convergence cycles and how faster learning beats the competition.