Production of Boeing 787 Dreamliner Delayed Again 334
Hugh Pickens writes "Boeing has discovered microscopic wrinkles in the skin of the 787's fuselage and has ordered Italian supplier Alenia Aeronautica to halt production of fuselage sections at a factory in Italy. 'In two areas on the fuselage, the structure doesn't have the long-term strength that we want,' says Boeing spokeswoman Lori Gunter. To repair the wrinkles, additional layers of carbon composite material are being added to a 787 at the South Carolina factory and twenty-two other planes must also be patched. Production of the 787 has been fraught with problems with ill-fitting parts, casting doubt on Boeing's strategy of relying on overseas suppliers to build big sections of the aircraft before assembling them at its facilities near Seattle. The 787, built for fuel efficiency from lightweight carbon composite parts, is a priority for Boeing as it struggles with dwindling orders amid the global recession. Customers had been expecting the first of the new jets in the first quarter of 2010 — nearly two years earlier than they will be delivered. The delays have cost Boeing credibility and billions of dollars in anticipated expenses and penalties. Orders for 72 planes have been canceled already this year, although Boeing still has confirmed orders for over 800 aircraft."
Would this be the place (Score:3, Insightful)
where I point out that maybe if they'd kept those jobs in the United States instead of tying to save a few pennies or getting a contract or two from a state airline that the parts might actually work right the first time.
Yes, companies that send jobs overseas, I'm looking at you.
"Boeing has discovered found microscopic wrinkles" (Score:3, Insightful)
"Boeing has discovered found microscopic wrinkles" ? Huh?
Re:And somewhere across the pond... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And somewhere across the pond... (Score:4, Insightful)
I can imagine that - it is a major loss of face at Boeing, especially after they laughed so hard at Airbus about those A380 delays.
Re:Would this be the place (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would it have been guaranteed to "work right the first time?"
The article indicates that it's a design fault. Either in the design of the manufacturing process, or earlier.
That tells me it's Boeing's fault that the problem exists, not the Italian manufacturers.
What a relief... (Score:5, Insightful)
A few words... (Score:4, Insightful)
All this is because of American companies' belief in complexity. We should borrow a leaf from the Russians who I believe, are champions of simplicity which actually delivers.
Let's hear it for.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Another victory for outsourcing your core competency.
Re:It's hard at the bleeding edge. (Score:4, Insightful)
Take this situation where some overpaid executives decided that it would be a good business decision to outsource the work to Italy. The flaws in the design might have happened if made in the US, but your communication lines would have been shorter (from worker to end decision maker), and problems would be identified and stamped out quicker. I'd like to see data on the number of people between top brass and actual laborers today and twenty years ago for the top 100 companies in the US, and see the difference. Something tells me the more management you have, the crappier your product.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Boeing screwed up by outsourcing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's hard at the bleeding edge. (Score:1, Insightful)
Remember folks, this is why you pay your high end executives lots of money....
What? To fuck over a company, the people working there, and the customers? That's all I see executives with over-the-top salaries and perks do. And don't give me the old "best money attracts the best talent" bullshit - I've seen kids running lemonade stands with more business sense than most big-shot execs.
Re:Hope Boeing pulls it off SOMEDAY (Score:2, Insightful)
The world needs to stop flying all over the globe anyway. When air travel is unavoidable fuel economy isn't the most important thing. Splatfree miles is what counts. Boeing is doing fine.
Re:Anyone seeing parallels to IT projects here?? (Score:5, Insightful)
The 787 is new. Most of the time if you're doing a construction project, you're doing something basically the same or very similar to something you've done before, so you can estimate it well. When this doesn't hold, construction projects end up estimated just as poorly as IT projects. IT projects are always something new; if what you wanted already existed, you'd probably just buy it.
Boeing ain't what it used to be (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in the Pacific Northwest, where Boeing used to do most everything. There is a strong belief up here - maybe because we feel screwed by Boeing - that Boeing moved production all over the place basically to bust one of the few strong unions we've had up here in Washington. I'm not a big union guy; but having watched Boeing's management and their treatment of their workers over the last 20 years... that's one place where I think a union is called for. It wasn't that long ago they laid off thousands of workers because of a downturn, yet found it in their hears to give the top-tier management very large (20% or so, IIRC) pay raises at the same time.
I've had friends who worked for Boeing (engineers, mostly) over the past couple of decades. Most of them have gotten out. When they started, there was a lot of pride amongst the workers at the company. That all went away, at least in the groups my friends worked in. And I do believe that companies whose employees are proud of their work do a better job than those who've stopped caring because they feel upper management has stopped caring about the product.
Re:Would this be the place (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore this is the first carbon composite airliner ever made. It's obviously going to have more problems than another aluminium plane. For example one of the problems with composites is that it is really easy to get subsurface delaminations that are very hard to detect. These problems are going to take time to solve.
Re:Boeing ain't what it used to be (Score:3, Insightful)
Agreed. I know practically everyone in the IT industry is agianst unions. In some cases that's for good reason. However, I really think that most IT people think they're not "standard blue-collar workers" because they sit in front of a computer instead of a manufacturing line.
This, plus the belief that nothing bad is ever going to happen to them, is probably the biggest reason for anti-union sentiment. In my opinion, however, this kind of thinking is dangerous. There are some really crappy workplaces out there, and in some cases people don't have much of a choice when it comes to working there. The dirty little secret no one is talking about is the fact that most IT jobs are or are going to be the next blue-collar trade that's outsourced to the cheapest labor pool.
Think about it, how many times have you listened to someone get riled up by a conservative news figure/talk show host railing against creeping socialism or the fact that we need to support the poor? I don't think a lot of "conservatives" realize that they're not actually on the same side as the super-rich "management class" teaching them to fear the liberal crowd. It's a bad combination when everyone's retirement is tied up in the market, so everyone advances policies that are tilted towards businesses. What they don't get is that demanding higher stock prices all the time is going to lead companies to make decisions that are bad for them in the long run. I think unions represent a good counter-balance to this, and have a different role in the 21st century than they did in the 20th.
Re:Would this be the place (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:A few words... (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry but:
From Russia:
Claim: Snopes in an authority on thruth and knows everything. Especially about astronaut pens and pencils.
Status: False.
Why do people think that Snopes is the end of all arguments? After all it's an American site. Spreading the American point of view.
I bet they still state that Bell and Bell alone invented the telephone.
Re:Would this be the place (Score:3, Insightful)
No, I agree with you. It's really easy to say that the technology is not read yet and shouldn't be used, ignoring the fact that it's projects like this that typically push tech forward.
The future of jetliners is composites.
Whether the project succeeds or not only matters in the short-term. The tech and experience produced even by a failed 787 project will pave the way for the thousands of new projects the future will surely produce, to everyone's benefit.
Re:Would this be the place (Score:4, Insightful)
Especially if you happen to be flying on one of the "failures" at the time.
Re:A few words... (Score:1, Insightful)
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/bush.asp [snopes.com]
So Campbell denies something, and the source of the claim goes to ground?
Sure... that sounds like snopes has reached a reliable interpretation of events.
A better example (Score:2, Insightful)
The US spends $500 million per launch to send guys up to the space station on a $2 billion space shuttle...the Russians use a dumb cheap soyuz rocket, and
can break even by selling a seat on the ride to any schmoe willing to pay 20 million bucks.
Is that better?
Re:Boeing screwed up by outsourcing (Score:5, Insightful)
A yes the old scape goat, blame the Chinese because we gave the contract to the cheapest Chinese manufacturer. The A380 also gets many of it parts made in China and they dont have these so called issues mainly because the Chinese will build a quality product if you insist on it, yes it costs more but then you get what you pay for. I work for a company that gets all it's products made in China and "we have no quality issues" because we have defined what we need and what we expect and paid the extra money to get it. It is almost as if American companies forgot the term "quality control" and "ISO standards" when it came to dealing with the Chinese because the Chinese do know about both these factors.
Re:Boeing screwed up by outsourcing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's hard at the bleeding edge. (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember folks, this is why you pay your high end executives lots of money....
What? To fuck over a company, the people working there, and the customers? That's all I see executives with over-the-top salaries and perks do. And don't give me the old "best money attracts the best talent" bullshit - I've seen kids running lemonade stands with more business sense than most big-shot execs.
YAWN, as usual, troll @ "the overpaid elite" from a /. AC.
You know what's happened as I've grown older? The more I think about starting my own company, the more amazed I am at the talent required to run one.
Aside from all that, $1m vs $2m isn't the issue-- for you it is, but you're just bitter with envy. It's all about incentives: what's going to motivate someone to work harder, when they've already got so much money? If you don't offer it, then it's not worth it to them, and they're not going to do it. If you were in the CEO's position 5 years ago, you would have been allured by the very same pressures they were-- outsource the jobs, reap massive profit for about 3-4 years, and get out and unload my shares before the consequences catch up to us.
Slashdot, get off your collective high horse and stop being bitter about supposedly overpaid execs. YOU worry about YOU, and you'll be paid quite a lot, as well. Maybe not $2m, but plenty enough to live a more than comfortable life. Most of the people that visit Slashdot are definitely above average folk. Pity that some of you waste it on bitter envy that leads to nothing but malice and unhappiness. Get up and do something about it! Master your job better! Get better at story telling, socializing, fraternizing; and soon you'll find yourself making friends with the higher ups and, while maybe not a promotion, you'll definitely make it through the layoffs.
Re:A few words... (Score:5, Insightful)
American ethnocentrism. What a concept, huh? People who have never been out of the country are perfectly willing to judge things of which they know nothing.
Let us remember, the Russian people, under Soviet leadership, faced us throughout the cold war for decades. AND, they competed respectably in space. Running them down is pure ignorance, IMHO.
Re:It's hard at the bleeding edge. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a pyramid scheme, essentially. You move up the corporate ladder, and then hire a bunch of peons. As long as there are people below you, you don't have to work hard. The dollar difference between what a peon creates for the market, and his meager salary, is what pays yours.
You think I'm kidding, but it's true. Some people just want theirs. You're thinking about efficiency. That makes you an engineer, and that's how you end up being on the bottom ~:/
Re:Anyone seeing parallels to IT projects here?? (Score:5, Insightful)
My day job is helping develop a new aircraft. It gives me some insight into what might be happening over there at Boeing. My take on the whole matter:
Boeing's first screwup was an entirely ridiculously aggressive schedule, one far more challenging than any of their previous projects. You'd think they would learn better, but apparently the latest batch of management monkeys figured they could make the impossible happen simply by declaring that it would, and expected the force of their words to be sufficient. (Lesson: things always take longer than you think they will. Use your worst-case estimate, not your best-case one)
Second, the outsourcing. Well, the outsourcing itself was not the problem, but rather it was the way they handled it. They farmed out major assemblies to far-flung companies, and then (here's the important part) didn't supervise them well enough. They simply took everyone's word that the engineering was sound and that they were on schedule with their builds. Everyone was actually late, but nobody wanted to admit it because nobody else was saying they were late. Eventually, they realized what was going on, but not after it was too late to fix it without causing too much of a delay. Boeing also failed to ensure that the fastener manufacturers would have their products ready in time... which would bite them in the ass later. (Lesson: Watch your subcontractors very, very carefully. Supervise their work, check their processes, and double-check their engineering)
Third, marketing. More specifically, the marketing types drove the program management and engineering decisions. Marketing wanted to shoot for a July 8 rollout to get an auspicious date... and thus commanded it to happen. Well, the only problem was that the airplane wasn't ready yet. Not only was it not assembled, but none of the internal systems were installed (they were supposed to be put in by the subcontractors, but everyone was late...). So what did they do? They slapped the empty sections together--with fasteners from Home Depot [flightglobal.com] as a temporary fix, and painted it. That's right, they used ordinary hardware-store bolts in place of flightworthy fasteners because some marketing dweeb wanted to show "visual progress", and they didn't have the time to do it right. And not only did they use non-flightworthy parts, but they lost track of where they put them, meaning they had to go back and check all of the fasteners to make sure the temporary ones were removed. Boeing lost months because they had to go back and redo stuff that wasn't per spec. (Lesson: "visual progress" isn't. Half-assedly slapping something together to make it look like you've accomplished something just costs you more time, effort, and money down the road. Do it right the first time.*)
I don't know enough about the latest delays (structural issues) to be able to comment on them. But the earlier stuff I see parallels to in all kinds of places, even at work.
*Dear God that pisses me off to no end... I can't tell you how many times I've been told just to "hurry up and do it" because my manager wished to show "visual progress", only to have to go back and do it again, correctly. Tape measures and paper flat patterns simply can't be used to install mount points with tolerances in the thousandths... either get the proper tooling support to do it right, or fit the entire thing together before installation. "Visual progress" is right up there with "think of the children" in the "worst phrases of the English language" category...
Defense contractor (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes they are a defense contractor. There's the rub isn't it? If they get into serious trouble it may be decided they are "too large to fail" and the government, in other words the taxpayer, will generously bail them out. So the MBAs can give themselves bonuses for screwing up projects.
Re:Let's hear it for.. (Score:1, Insightful)
Airbus began as a consortium of European aerospace companies; part of its basic structure is having a footprint throughout industrialized europe (EU). Them being in five countries is like boeing being in 5 states. It's nothing like what boeing is doing - outsourcing major production to Italy and Japan.
Re:Link (Score:3, Insightful)
The airport renovations for this aircraft would be less than what they have been for the 380. The reason is that the first craft out will not be the monster type, but would be a cargo craft. Keep in mind that for the 380, all new loading was developed. Finally, this aircraft (in a 737 size aircraft) would have a span less than a 747, weigh about 2/3-3/4 of what a 737 weighs, and would use about 1/3 to 1/2 of the fuel of a 737.
No, this is not fantasy. These are reality. Had MD not screwed up the MD-11 in terms of their engineering, then this craft would already be in production.
Re:And somewhere across the pond... (Score:5, Insightful)
"Ah, but the downside of the 380 is that you have to redesign the airports to take advantage of it. Otherwise it takes literally an hour to get everybody on and off."
Japan uses 7x7 airplanes with five hundred seats for some national routes. The redesigns for accomodating that number of passengers isn't great - split ramps with two exits rather than one - and the hardware is readily available. Unloading takes a few minutes. Even with one exit it would not take more than ten minutes. "literally an hour" is simply false.
Re:And somewhere across the pond... (Score:4, Insightful)
The article you linked says the A380 is "sold out until 2014", seems like a pretty good position to be in during a recession to me.
But they need to be sold out until something like 2030 before the airplane turns a profit. That's the problem. When you design a product in such a way that it's questionable whether you'll ever turn a profit even if you sell every single one you can make for the next 20 years, then something's wrong.
Re:Boeing screwed up by outsourcing (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A few words... (Score:5, Insightful)
That changed when the plane was landing. At first I thought people were applauding, which was a bit surprising, but then I realized that the sound was that of the entire roof shaking, you could actually see the roof plates moving against each other.
Are you talking about the cabin interior panels? That's not the "roof". Those are just panels hung from the frame around the fuselage. They're not designed to be entirely rigid. In fact, in most airliners you can see that the holes cut in the panels where the various framing parts are designed to fit in are not round, they're oval. That's so that the panels can move back and forth.
It used to freak me out too when I saw interior panels move, but then I looked more closely and read up on how these things are actually attached to the fuselage, and now I realize it's just normal. It happens on every plane too - if you look closely at the interior panels in any airplane, even an American-made one, you will see the panels flex and move on takeoff and landing, and during turbulence. Some of this is caused by the airplane itself flexing - airplanes are designed to flex - but most of it is just caused by the panels themselves not being 100% rigid in how they're attached. It's nothing to worry about.
Re:Boeing screwed up by outsourcing (Score:1, Insightful)
then what's the point of going to China for production if you're paying more?? And what is your company is producing in China? High quality bottle caps? Boeing's experience may be different because their needs are different. Have you thought of that? Of course not. Nothing like trying to bring down a "myth" by using your own tiny backyard as experience. A LOT of companies (or their employees) are complaining about quality of items from China.
Systems Engineering vs. "Technologists" (Score:5, Insightful)
As a mid-career aerodynamics engineer in the American aviation industry, the one trend that I wish I could reverse is the perception that "the process is the product", or that with suitable care and attention to composing Interface Control Documents (ICD's), that the actual act of doing detail design - of applying the lessons learned by a successful technology company over decades of tech and product development - is a fall out.
It seems to me that Boeing's touting its expertise as a "systems integrator" is a direct reflection of this attitude. You can only achieve the expertise in "systems integration" if you have learned the lessons by actually doing. For fifty years or so, this was accomplished in this industry naturally - young engineers would come start their careers doing basic work (designing clips and brackets, plotting data, composing reports under senior engineers' supervision). Do that long enough, and you gain enough experience to begin to know where issues may lie, and procedures to take to avoid them. Eventually, one could move into a position of seniority where you would be the one overseeing younger engineers, and directing them what and what not to do.
Nowadays, it seems that the staffs in Systems Engineering (or SEIT) have no practical experience whatsoever. They are given checklists, written by the last wave of experts prior to their golden parachute retirement party, that tell them the most basic questions to ask and the most basic data to be documented, but don't have the hard won knowledge required to push the issue when required. Too often, design reviews are reduced to a SEIT team making sure their document list is complete - and not bothering to check that the information contained in those documents are accurate or applicable.
Great book on the development of the 747, "Widebody", by Clive Irving. In it, he points to the fact that what enabled the 747 was a direct result of all that came before it in Boeing's experience - from a monocoque fuselage in the 247 (and the importance of doing wind tunnel testing - and engineering - in house lest the results be pinched by the competition), through the complicated systems on the B-29, to the swept wing and podded engines of the 707. And the players in the 747 development were instrumental in all of those previous projects. He stresses the "design bibles" that were compiled across the technical specialties at Boeing - paid for in some cases by pilot lives (Eddie Allen and others). During the days of competition with the USSR to develop an SST, those design bibles were guarded as if they were state secrets.
Fast forward to today - Boeing outsources not on a build-to-print basis (as you would to a subcontractor), but a total systems solution. They are trusting their subs to design primary structure and produce them - a situation unimaginable in the old days. Maybe they could get away with that approach once - but if you do pursue that path, after you do this once when do you learn and how do you teach the next generation for future design projects? You don't. Who will be available in your home organization to raise the bullshit flag when a low cost subcontractor promises something that is patently impossible? No one, at least no one with the background of experience and technical reputation to be able to stand up to management, badge on the table, saying this shit won't fly.
Unfortunately for Boeing, and the US, I feel they have already mortgaged their ability to pull off this outsourcing by bleeding their technical staff over the past decade or so. They will eventually pull the 787 program together, and it will eventually pull a profit - lack of competition will insure that - but the break even point on this program will continue to slip to the right, just as it did on the L-1011 and the DC-10, and you can see what those programs did to their respective companies.
Re:Would this be the place (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's hard at the bleeding edge. (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember folks, this is why you pay your high end executives lots of money....
They pay themselves lots of money. Presumably because they fear that no-one will employ them again after making mistakes.
Re:Boeing screwed up by outsourcing (Score:1, Insightful)
Ehh, it's not like the scape goat didn't earn its standing in the eyes of many.
Re:Would this be the place (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope you like walking around the world and curing your diseases with water.
Ah - homeopathy!