24 March 2007
<a href=”newsfeed.php?artnum=493″ target=”_blank”>Earlier this month</a> we reported that Columbia had laid off 60 workers as it attempted to overcome the problems caused by a series of ‘unfortunate events’.
That wasn’t enough. Randy Bolinger, the company’s vice president of marketing and business development, annouced yesterday that it was temporarily laying off 185 more employees and that current CEO Bing Lantis is to step down from the company ‘to attend to family matters and other personal interests’.
Lantis’ place will be taken by Wan Abd Majid, a Malaysian native with long experience of the aviation industry. He has been connected with Columbia for a number of years. The company also created other key senior management positions including Chief Restructuring Officer, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer.
The company says it hopes that the ‘furlough’ of 185 employees (between a third and half of the workforce) will last only four to six weeks. In the meantime it is to continue paying them benefits and to train them in the use of new tooling. The furlough ‘allows Columbia to execute necessary measures to refine production and more aggressively pursue Lean Manufacturing and Lean Enterprise process improvements.’
During the period it hopes to continue to produce four airframes a week. The company manufactures the Columbia 350 and Columbia 400 composite aircraft.
