Excessive Modularity Hindered Development of the 787 200
TAGmclaren writes "The Harvard Business Review is running a fascinating article exploring the issues facing Boeing's Dreamliner. Rather than simply blaming outsourcing, as much of the commentary has been focused on, the article delves into the benefits of integration and how being integrated when developing a new product gives engineers more degrees of freedom. From the article: 'Historically, Boeing understood that, and had worked with its subcontractors on that basis. If it was going to rely on them, it would provide them with detailed blueprints of the parts that were required — after Boeing had already created them. That, in turn, meant that Boeing had to design all the relevant pieces of the puzzle itself, first. But with the 787, it appears that Boeing tried a very different approach: rather than having the puzzle solved and asking the suppliers to provide a defined puzzle piece, they asked suppliers to create their own blueprints for parts. The puzzle hadn't been properly solved when Boeing asked suppliers for the pieces. It should come as little surprise then, that as the components came back from far-flung suppliers, for the first plane ever made of composite materials... those parts didn't all fit together. Time and cost blew out accordingly. It's easy to blame the outsourcing. But, in this instance, it wasn't so much the outsourcing, as it was the decision to modularize a complicated problem too soon.'"
No specs? (Score:5, Insightful)
So Boeing told the contractors what they needed to build, but didn't give them hard specifications? What the hell? Two things:
Boeing needs to have their collective asses kicked for doing it this way, and:
The subcontractors should never have agreed to the work without specs first.
The first one is probably the result of Boeing not wanting to spend the engineering dollars to develop the blueprints, and the second is due to the enormous amounts of money involved in making the parts.
Now that I know this, you'll never catch me on one of those abominations. What the hell was Boeing thinking?
Interesting problem (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No specs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Engineering (Score:4, Insightful)
Boeing didn't want to hire all the engineers needed to design the 787. So when they outsourced these subsystems they also counted on their suppliers to do the engineering of these subsystems.
The problem is that engineers are not fungible. Boeing didn't appreciate this, any more than the software industry did when it started outsourcing.
An aerospace structural frame engineer is not the same thing as a marine structure engineer. There are huge differences in the body of experience despite the fact that they both use the same tools.
This was the primary cause of the delays Boeing had. It will continue to be a problem for anyone who tries this sort of outsourcing.
Re:No specs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Having lived for over 5 years in Japan, I doubt the Japanese subcontractors would build anything without clear specifications.
The problem is the toilet seat bracket had to be made 1/10 mm thicker for supersized passengers, and that was properly annotated by the seat mfgr on blueprint revision #24352. Unfortunately the news never reached the design engineers for the landing gear who need to adjust blueprint revision #7652 foward by 2 mm
My extensive experience with electronic design is if the Chinese say they'll give you a container full of old fashioned thru hole 1K resistors at a tenth of a penny each or whatever they will in fact do so. Maybe they painted the resistor color code with lead paint and the assembly line workers are political prisoners, but the resistance and power dissipation specs will be more or less as per the data sheet. And you can talk the Indonesians into providing a container full of microwave medium power bipolar transistors with a Pd of one watt and a Ft of 25 GHz for two bucks each and they will in fact do it. But god help you if you tell both of them, "I'd like a class A biased driver amp assembly so you two kids cooperate mkay?" Now multiply that by one zillion subcontractors all operating more or less without adult oversight by design to save money as a new project management technique, and you've got a recipe for disaster.
"I've got an idea, lets improve the obvious metrics, then you little guys can work together to design and build it which will make me a bunch of money, mkay?" That stuff doesn't fly.
Re:No specs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Welcome to the 21st century, I hope your trip from 1950 was a comfortable one! Here in the 21st century computers have advanced to the point where we don't need to physically prototype things anymore - it can, and has been, done digitally for well over a decade now. In fact, one of the most complex things that man is currently building (a nuclear submarine, something else new to you but take my word on it) are now routinely and successfully designed and built without any physical prototype.
Seriously - you and a bunch of other commenters are utterly clueless as to the state-of-the-art of over a decade ago. Boeing has built (IIRC) three new aircraft now (plus major upgrades like the new 747) using completely digital design, visualization, and validation tools. While it's not entirely a mature technology, it's not new and very complex vehicles are and have been in service for years that were designed and built using it.
Prototyping persists with smaller items because the requisite systems and software are so expensive, and is enabled by the fact that the teams involved are relatively small and simple, physically located in one place, and the prototypes are relatively cheap and new ones can be turned around (at worst) in a few weeks. On the other hand, a mockup/prototype of something like a nuclear submarine or a major aircraft can cost tens of millions of dollars (or more) and take a year or more to assemble. To assume that the latter must prototype because the former do is... ludicrous at best.
The problem here isn't lack of prototyping, it appears that they tried to extend the process too far and the management systems weren't weren't set up properly to handle the new process.