EVERETT – Building the Boeing Co.’s new 787 Dreamliner will be like child’s play compared to plane-building 40 years ago.
“The pieces just fit together so much easier,” said Jeff Weymouth, who worked at Boeing in the 1960s and is assigned to the 787.
Weymouth first worked in Boeing’s Renton site, where the first single-aisle 737 was being built. Initially, workers didn’t have a Gemcore machine, an automated riveting tool that Boeing began using in Everett on its 747. Without the Gemcore, the riveting process – piecing together the aluminum sheets with rivets -was “deafening,” Weymouth said.
The new 787 Dreamliner eliminates that entire process with the manufacturing of a one-piece composite fuselage.
Former Everett site manager John Quinlivan doesn’t find mind-boggling Boeing’s ability to cut out entirely what used to be one of the most time-consuming steps to building an aircraft. Boeing didn’t make the strides seen in the 787 overnight.
The company incorporates new technology into its plane-making processes, learns lessons from each plane and responds to competition.
Computers propelled many changes in the way the 747 and 787 are produced. To build the 747, engineers used pencil and paper to create 75,000 drawings by hand.
Fewer than 20 years ago, Boeing launched the 777, its first aircraft designed completely on a computer.
As Quinlivan expected, the company took it up a notch with the 787. Engineers around the world can accurately simulate assembly of the Dreamliner using shared electronic drawings and specifications on a software system. The program, pioneered by Germany’s Dassault Systemes, allows engineers to spot production problems well before the plane hits the assembly line.
Joe Sutter, lead engineer on the 747, struggled with the plane’s engine manufacturer. As Boeing has improved its planes, engine makers have tried to keep up. When Boeing was developing the 777, skeptics downplayed the safety and reliability of a twin-engine plane making it across the ocean, said Ed Renouard, who was in charge of the Everett site from 1993 to 1999. Even Boeing “graybeards” didn’t believe an engine could be made big enough to carry aircraft long distances with only two engines attached.
“People thought a twin shouldn’t be flying across the ocean,” Renouard said. “Now you see the twins flying all over.”
Today, Boeing is pushing the envelope again with its 787, made mostly of composite materials. The 787 shows the reversal of an earlier habit at Boeing: in-house work.
Over the past 40 years, Boeing has gone from building virtually every part on an aircraft to assembling the major pieces, Weymouth noted.
Therefore, in the factory, “It takes a lot less people today to manufacture a plane,” he said.
The concept hasn’t won the hearts of Boeing’s labor unions but the company maintains it’s a must to stay competitive. Scott Strode, vice president of 787 airplane development and production, recently told Boeing workers at a 787 simulation ceremony that Boeing is concentrating on what it does best with the Dreamliner and allowing its partners to do what they do best.
Boeing used to jest about its ability to scramble for parts, to expedite pieces. But the company has put more and more of that responsibility on suppliers, increasingly so with the 787.
Just as Boeing internally has called for employees further and further down the line to “own” their work, the company wants to push that same responsibility on suppliers, said Jim Johnson, manager of the Everett site from 1988 to 1993.
The company’s philosophy of “continual improvement” is hard to spot with the naked eye, Johnson said. But when everybody works to get better all the time, eventually that effort produces tangible results.
Production rates on the 747 have been as high as seven jets per month. Forty years later, Boeing has its sights on turning out its newest plane, the 787 Dreamliner, in three days.
“We just keep evolving,” Johnson said.
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