787 supply-chain company picks a winner...allegedly

This has "win" written all over it.

Larry Lawson, 55, takes over April 6 at Wichita, Kansas- based Spirit as he shifts to supplying components for commercial airliners from a career working on military aircraft. He retired yesterday from Lockheed Martin.

He joins Spirit about five months after the company recorded $590 million in charges and said it couldn’t meet its forecast as it struggled to simultaneously develop parts for jets, including Boeing’s troubled 787 Dreamliner. He oversaw production of the F-35, the Pentagon’s most expensive weapons program and a plane plagued by seven years of delays.

A lack of airliner experience may make for a “challenging” leadership transition for Spirit, which has faced problems as new-plane programs overlapped, said Doug Harned, an analyst with Sanford C Bernstein in New York.