Frank Shrontz, who led the American aviation giant Boeing Co. in a decade of enormous competition between 1986 and 1996, died this past Saturday at the age of 92. Lawyer by training, Shrontz led the company in the era of innovation, a decade in which the Boeing 777 was designed and the quality standard was raised. After studying processes initiated by Japanese automakers such as Toyota Motor Corp. Boeing modernized to compete against its European rival Airbus SE.
The company is not going through the best moment after an air incident last January in which a plane lost part of the fuselage in mid-flight.
Although Shrontz had no engineering background, fostered leaders such as engineers Philip Condithis successor as CEO of Boeing, and Alan Mulally who turned around the company’s commercial aircraft division in the late 1990s before taking the reins of another major company, Ford Motor Co.
Under Shrontz’s direction, Boeing reinvented long-haul travel with the twin-engine 777the company’s best-selling wide-body aircraft, and redesigned the iconic 747 jumbo jet for a new generation of airlines. The modernization of the single-aisle 737 was also a sales success.
Shrontz presided over one of the largest expansions in Boeing’s history, when sales rose to $35 billion in 1995 (€32.5 million at today’s exchange rates), up from $16 billion a decade earlier (14. 8 million euros) a decade earlier.
Necessary changes
The global slowdown in aircraft orders after The 1991 Persian Gulf War affected Boeing and led Shrontz to reform the company: eliminated almost 40,000 jobs. In 1995, the largest aircraft manufacturer, headquartered in Seattle at the time, had about 105,000 employees. “Trying to turn this company around without a crisis was not easy,” he said in a 1995 Fortune magazine interview. “We had 75 years of history and we were very successful. There was a strong feeling of ‘why change?'”
Shrontz guided Boeing’s $3.2 billion acquisition of Rockwell International Corp.’s aerospace and defense divisions in 1996. He also helped in the merger with the number one manufacturer of military aircraft, McDonnell Douglas Corp. in 1997. The $16.3 billion (€15 million) deal was completed after his retirement as company president. Boeing, now based in Northern Virginia, is one of the largest American exporters.
During his tenure, Boeing was named prime contractor for the International Space Station program in 1993., the largest international space project ever undertaken. By the time Shrontz stepped down as CEO in 1996, Boeing had reduced production costs, increased capacity and improved production processes, helping to create its new flagship product: the 777 widebody.
“Key” executive
Shrontz was “charming but key,” said Carolyn Corvi, a former Boeing executive, in a 2017 interview. He regularly sought input from employees, including factory engineers and machinists. Shrontz asked difficult business and technical questions that helped shape the aircraft developed under his command, such as the 737 Next Generation.
He was “a really good leader and a really good businessman,” Corvi said. “But he also has that human side that makes him care about people.”
Frank Anderson Shrontz was born on December 14, 1931 in Boise, Idaho. In 1954, he earned a law degree from the University of Idaho in Boise. Four years later he earned an MBA from Harvard University.
Shrontz spent most of his career at Boeing. He started as a contracts coordinator in 1958 before working as an executive in various departments including sales, marketing and planning. In 1973, Shrontz left the company to become assistant secretary of the US Air Force. and spent the final year of President Gerald Ford’s administration as deputy secretary of defense.
Shrontz returned to Boeing in 1977 as vice president of contract planning and administration. He spent the next four years as general manager of the company’s commercial aircraft division, responsible for the manufacture of the 707, 727 and 737 aircraftand became president of the unit in 1984.
