9% the previous year, and Net Profit Margin up to 5.1% from 1.9% the previous fiscal year. For all full financial analysis of the last five years of Boeing's financial history, please see the Appendix for The Boeing Company Ratio Analysis. While the company continues to excel at profitability, the areas of improvement include Days-to-Sell Inventory, which grew to 147 days in FY201, and Operating Cycle (time from taking an order to fulfilling it and getting paid) increased from 138 days to 180 days in FY2010. These financial results underscore how critical it for the company to continually invest in improving operational performance to overcome slow sales in certain business segments (Joiner, 2009). Heavy investments in quality management and compliance are necessary to reduce these costs over the long-term as well (Parks, Connor, 2011).

The greatest strengths of Boeing include its strong market position in the commercial aircraft market (Donnini, 2010), high percentage of spending on R&D, which led the industry in FY 2010 with $4.1B spent on primary research (Parks, Connor, 2011) and continued spending on agile product development and operational efficiency programs including Six Sigma and lean manufacturing (Joiner, 2009). The greatest weaknesses include past delays in commercial aircraft development impacting the current backlog, costing nearly $25M in lost orders to competitors (Donnini, 2010) (Benassy-Quere, Fontagne, Raff, 2011) and continued labor relations costs and conflict (Donnini, 2010).

Conclusion and Future Strategy

China is committing 6% of their total national budget to aviation defense alone (Donnini, 2010). India likewise is a heavy investor in these new defense-related programs. Boeing has the advantage against these competitors as their level of software expertise, combined with knowledge of the product lifecycle management (PLM and agile-based approaches to new product development are far ahead of their smaller regional competitors (Clements, 2010). Both the Indian and Chinese government leaders know this and are actively speaking with Boeing senior management today. Second, the replacement of the aging and highly successful Boeing 737 class needs to be done aggressively to lock out Airbus, who has made inroads into this market. Third, growth through intelligent acquisition needs to occur so Boeing can vertically integrate its design and production operations to ensure the highest possible quality and lowest possible price for its customers globally.