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Production of Boeing 787 Dreamliner Delayed Again
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."
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" ? Huh?
boeing is fucked.
I heard the 787 was going to coincide with the release of Duke Nukem forever.
... an EADS executive is laughing with glee...
Sounds like the start up of the 747. Boeing nearly bankrupted the company by pushing the envelope in plane design and manufacturing when many people didn't think the business model would work out. They're at the same point again for the same reasons, so we will see if they can do it again.
But Boeing is lots more than the Commercial Airplane group; I believe they are the number one or two US defense contractor so even if the 787 takes a long time to break even, the company will still survive.
If, however, the plane actually flops because of the choices they made (heavy use of composites PLUS heavy outsourcing), then Commercial Airplane may lose enough money to trash the company.
Remember folks, this is why you pay your high end executives lots of money....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Now Boeing can finally pin the blame for all the delays on another company again.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
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.
Another victory for outsourcing your core competency.
This Youtube video was sent to me from a friend that works at Boeing (not in the commercial division). About sums things up.
The world is going to need more fuel-efficient planes badly. Let's all hope Boeing pulls this off, or most of us will be fuel-priced out of the option of flying.
For something that is meant to go up in the clouds each time looks more like vaporware.
Boeing is designing a permanent fix to the wrinkle problem so future versions of the plane won't have to be modified. The existing fuselage wrinkles, she said, will not compromise the flight safety of the 787s.
The existing fuselage wrinkles might not compromise the flight safety of the 787s, but they will weigh and cost a lot more than planned because of the extra layers of carbon composite material. The added weight will reduce fuel efficiency for the entire lifetime of the airplane, which further increases the cost of use of these planes for the airlines that will be buying them. As for the permanent fix:
Boeing said tests had shown it needed to reinforce areas where the plane's wings join the fuselage.
You can bet this means all future 787s will weigh more than Boeing told their investors they would, which means some companies who slightly prefered 787s over an alternative by, say, Airbus, might also cancel their orders and buy from the competition instead.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
They did this for several reasons. The first was to break the unions. The second, and more important, was to help sales. Sadly, America has some of the best knowledge of composites and the RIGHT place for this was here, not elsewhere. At this time, all of the issues that Boeing has is with offshored items (Production for china has been a QUIET NIGHTMARE for Boeing; Many of the parts are of VERY low quality). In fairness, my Wife and a number of friends work for Boeing, so I do get to see info that is not in the main-stream press.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's wierd - I used to think IT projects were the only projects that were impossible to accurately estimate. A lot of PMs I run into at work seem to think a software project is the same as a construction project, but I think they're totally different. There is little change in the time it takes to pour a certain amount of concrete, run standard electrical for a commercial building, or other construction/product build tasks. In software-land, since everything's so fluid, it's anyone's guess how much time it'll take to fix some crazy bug, install hardware, debug a hardware or software installation, or write documentation. And even when a construction project over-runs its time, you pretty much know exactly how far off you are and how long until you're on track again.
Now this 787 project comes out and blows my assumptions away! Apparently you CAN overrun a construction or build project's time and budget just as easily as IT projects.
From what I've been reading, the fact that Boeing basically outsourced everything but final assembly of the plane to different contractors has come back to bite them. One of my IT specialties is integration work -- and I've worked on a lot of contracted software products that totally don't work when you get their individual parts back and mash them together.
Part of me really wants to gloat and say, "Ha ha, you listened to a bunch of retarded MBA consultants who convinced you that lean production and lowest-bidder subcontracting was the way to go!". BUT, I really can't. Boeing's in a lot of trouble if they can't pull off a major integration/rework effort right away. Airplanes are one of the last things the US actually makes and exports from a manufacturing perspective, so it's important that they just drop everything and figure out what's wrong. Airbus will be more than happy to sell A340s, A350s and A380s to all the waiting airlines.
But deep down, I still think those MBAs should have thought a little bit about how many thousands of parts and systems a typical plane has...
Boeing/MD has more airlining credibility than all the rest combined. An Airbus flight would have to be 50% off for me to even consider it.
If someone can show me where other planes are safer I'd like to hear about it.
Boeing costing americans money vs airbus today actually bringing in money to the EU.. time to dump Boeing into a shallow grave...
I've been following the whole Dreamliner story since the beginning and this is really disappointing. This is yet another bump in their delivery of what amounts to an awesome and very ambitious aircraft. The Dreamliner really started making a splash when Boeing was down on their luck. It was such a big splash and so ambitious that customers forced Airbus to rethink their much more modest proposal. I was surprised when I saw how soon Boeing was promising to deliver them. No one has ever built an airliner (or anything of that size that I know of) entirely out of carbon fiber. As a technology nerd, I gave Boeing a lot of kudos for being ambitious and pushing the envelope. Alas, it seems poor execution plagues all engineering projects. Before this, it was the bolts. I would give them a break for trying something new but I'm not so sure their customers will.
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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.
#DeleteChrome
The problems are with barrels that aren't even close to production yet. Boeing (in as much as you can believe them anymore) says that this will not delay the production of the 787 (to first flight) of the 787 any further than it already has been.
This information is out there, is it so difficult to go find it before publishing wrong info instead?
http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/2009/08/breaking-structural-flaw-halts.html
Oh yeah, and the problem with the sections isn't with the skin, it's with the stringers behind them. It leads to wrinkles in the skin, but the real fix is to not mess up the stringers in the first place.
The statement that this casts even more doubt on the outsourcing model set up at Boeing under Alan Mullaly is most definitely not diminished by the inaccuracies in the reporting of these details.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
When my mom discovered found wrinkles around her eyes and mouth she had them fixed fairly cheaply with Botox. Maybe Boeing can do the same.
This plane has had a long history of show-stopper problems, delays, more problems, and more problems. And it still hasn't flown once.
As an airline passenger, this is not making me feel like this is a plane I can trust or should want to fly on. And yes I can choose to fly airlines that haven't ordered and won't use the 787. Pretty easy since it's not exactly selling like wild anyway.
EADS would have every right to gloat but they're screwed up with 380 problems and internal issues. Both companies look like jokes right now.
Sig for hire.
Lesson learned:
outsource known manufacturing, sound technology is easy.
outsource 1st time manufacturing, cutting technology is not so easy.
If the 787 provides the target efficiency that Boeing was looking for/advertising, then these delays are worth it. Otherwise, it a total management screw up.
had Boeing REALLY cared about fuel, they would be pushing their BWB/X-48. That would have used less in a 380 class craft than a 737 does today. A craft like that would be perfect for the military in Tankers, Cargo, and perhaps b-52 replacements. Likewise, it is the ideal craft for cargo or passenger/cargo mixed. ABout the ONLY big problem with it, is that a number of passengers want the windows (not a big issue with cameras today), And a number of them will not like the feeling in a bank, even a shallow roll. Of course, the smart thing is to store cargo on the outer side and then do a double decker passenger towards the middle. I have little doubt that said aircraft would have PLENTY of sales
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They should just do what we do in software. Slap a beta label on it and ship it out the door. Then act condescending when someone complains that their plane crashed.
I "discovered found" a mistake; production of this story should have been delayed because of microscopic wrinkles in the sentence structure.
Read my blog: HansMast.com
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?
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Russian planes fly with airlines worldwide. Just two examples:
Tu-154 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-154 "The aircraft has been exported and operated by about 17 non-Russian airlines, as well as a number of non-Russian airforces. It remains the standard airliner for domestic routes across Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union (CIS). The Tu-154 is one of the fastest civilian planes in operation (975 km/h) and has a range of 5280 km. Designed to handle unpaved and gravel airfields, it often operates in extreme Arctic conditions of Russia's northern territories."
(I've flown on it. Nice plane.) pics at airliners.net
The older Tu-134 "has seen long-term service with some 42 countries, with some European airlines having made very intense use of the 134 (as many as 12 takeoffs & landings per plane daily)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-134
I guess I'm forced to buy an Airbus then.
To this I'd kinda respond with the same thing we do in our own industry: this plane is pretty much in the "beta test" phase. It's under development and not in use except for testing yet. The problems discovered now might hurt Boeing via a shifted deadline, but judging the safety of the plane based on it's testing phase (where they're SUPPOSED to find problems) is a bit like saying that Firefox sucks because back when you tried Phoenix v0.3 it crashed constantly.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
For those who have no idea what the parent is talking about, I Googled it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-48
If the 787 is having so many problems with a mostly conventional design, imagine how many problems that X-48 airframe would have.
Comment of the year
The statement that this casts even more doubt on the outsourcing model set up at Boeing under Alan Mullaly is most definitely not diminished by the inaccuracies in the reporting of these details.
Does this mean what it actually says or do you have an accidental double-negative there?
I hope Boeing continues to take the same approach to plane design that Nintendo does for Zelda games or Blizzard does for ANY kind. Take the time to get it right and make a quality product. I don't want them half-assing it to get it into production, then the thing falls apart when I'm flying it in. That would be very bad. I can live without the 787 for a couple of extra years if it means that using it won't cost me the time I have left on this earth.
I want to get there fast.
Concorde FTW.
You mean willingly inject themselves with poison?
This is part of a reply to another poster. But I thought I would move it up.
Now, what Boeing has done is not only have they created a radically new design in aircraft they have also redesigned their entire design and production process at the same time. Sort of like throwing away your entire code base and then deciding to migrate everything from OSS/AJAX tool sets to MS Visual Studio .Net and rewrite everything all at once. After firing most of your staff and replacing them with distributed off shored development teams.
Bringing a radical new aircraft design online has got to be a difficult R&D problem to begin with. But on top of that they are redesigning their entire end-to-end production process.
This is insane. I would never as a manager, or owner of my own business, gamble on this scale. One or the other but not both. Esp. when lives are at stake. This points to a complete breakdown of management.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
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.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Its utter gibberish. Who is Campbelll, and whats he got to do with the space pen?
Woops, guess I am a little behind schedule
... than an Airbus that falls out of the sky. As too many of them have done.
As an airline passenger, this is not making me feel like this is a plane I can trust or should want to fly on. And yes I can choose to fly airlines that haven't ordered and won't use the 787. Pretty easy since it's not exactly selling like wild anyway.
Huh? Boeing has 800 orders for it before its launch. That is basically unheard-of in the industry. Name any successful airplane - none of them had that many orders prior to launch.
As for your "not gonna fly it because it's got pre-production problems" stance, I'd like to know what airliners you do feel comfortable on so I can list all the incidents and accidents they were involved in prior to launch, and see if you still feel as comfortable flying them afterwards.
From what I've been reading, the fact that Boeing basically outsourced everything but final assembly of the plane to different contractors has come back to bite them. One of my IT specialties is integration work -- and I've worked on a lot of contracted software products that totally don't work when you get their individual parts back and mash them together.
I'm preaching to the choir, perhaps, but this is a very, very very important point: Don't EVER outsource your core competence! Every company has a core strength, their purpose for existing. It does change with time: IBM started out with office furniture and office equipment, slowly moving through adding machines, typewriters, through to early computers, though to today as a major IT consulation firm. But at every step of the way, IBM had a clear core competence that they guarded fiercely with NDAs and big research spending, that continues to this day.
They have not lost their core competence - if anything, IBM has strengthened it even as it has redefined what that core competence is.
Are you an executive? Remember this: Every company has their "mojo" - their "secret sauce" - the service that defines the value of the company. Find out what that is, and work like crazy to strengthen and preserve that core value. Outsource whatever you like so long as you don't outsource that core company value.
For example, a logging company may maintain a small power plant at its lumber mill, for various reasons. Generating power is likely *not* part of the core competency of the logging company, so if it can be done cheaper by a power company, it's probably a good idea. But the logging company had better not subcontract logging to other firms for the lowest bidding price, because this represents ths core value of the company, and by doing so, you become a dead-weight "middle man" that your customers will eventually want to eliminate. Your company loses its reason for existing.
If your company builds airplanes, then you had better focus on being able to build airplanes, and not source out building airplanes to other companies - else what value does your company really offer?
It's a bone-headedly simple concept, and for some reason, it doesn't seem to be well taught in business colleges.
Why?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
How old do *you* think is my fuselage?
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.
Some people would like to look *good* in the coffin.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
... Airbus is going to eat it on the over sized beast they bet on, and the 787 is likely to look like the right size going forward....
Then, when you've recovered from you fit of national penis size competition angst, I wonder what you'll have to come up up with when the A350 files?
Boeing was doing it right when they designed the 777, which is and has been a massive success (it killed the A340's market almost completely, two engines are cheaper than 4), but Boeing forgot that time marches on and that truly large planes like the 747 or the A380 will still be needed for the forseeable future as large hubs are going nowhere in a hurry. Boeing was lost with the whole Sonic Cruiser thing and wasted a lot of time before they came up with a new concept that wasn't so radical as to scare customers off (which the sonic cruiser almost certainly did).
Boeing's back-tracking to do the 747-8F when Airbus was flopping around with the A380 delays was a good concept in order to capitalise on the market need for large freighters (the A380F was cancelled after UPS and Fedex cancelled their orders), but it was something that was done in the spur of the moment and the passenger version, the 747-8 has been a major flop, and with only Lufthansa having ordered any there have been reports atht it will be cancelled. But the fact that Boeing did try to get back into the large passenger plane market shows that they themselves would have designed and built the A380 if they had know that there would be a market for it.
And national penis size competition guys like you would then be crowing about how the US was making the world's biggest passenger plane instead of engaging in envious relativsim because, in all honesty you don't give a shit about the 787 or how good or bad it is (economics etc), becuase you certainly didn't give a shit when you were buying and driving humungous cars that guzzle gas. No, you care about not having the biggest or the fastest.
You seen that flying wing concept that Boeing and others have been working on in recent years? That will be the next chance for the endless duel to duke it out again over who makes better (read bigger) planes, especially if they run on hydrogen and need huge space for the tanks.
yilanyagi.com
karincayumurtasi.net
fx15.be
Wow, these posts suggest Boeing has completely forgotten all the lessons it promoted for the 777 jet. There was a TV series and a book called 21st Century Jet which detailed the construction of the 777 and it was, as far as projects go, a triumph. It is a fascinating read. From memory one of the reason it was such a success was because they fostered an atmosphere of complete openess, not getting into blame wars and generally just knuckling down and solving issues. Sounds like all that has been forgotten in their rush to get their "dreamliner" out in time to compete with the Airbus 380.
Go ahead, click the link to Snopes and soak in the realization that you're an ignorant twat .
Fuck, slashdotters are getting DUMBER.
The 737 entered service in 1967. The A320 entered service in 1988. To get meaningful numbers, you need to compare accident rates per total airframe cycles of aircraft manufactured after 1988. But, for an off-the-cuff response using the Aviation Safety Network, the 737-400 first saw service in 1986, so if you compare the hull-loss rate of all 737s, starting with the 737-400 to those of all A318, 319, 320 and 321s, you'd still need an order of magnitude difference to prove anything. For raw numbers, however, a total of 20 737-400, -500, -600, -700, -800 and -900 hulls have been lost to all causes. Similarly, 21 A318, A319, A320 and A321 hulls have been lost.
I don't know how many cycles they have between them, but the evident conclusions are:
A. It's a lot safer to fly now than it was thirty years ago.
B. There's no "ugly" difference between the A320 and the B737, either in favor or against FBW.
Expect Boeing to be asking for "bail-out" money shortly, blaming their woes upon the "down" market, rather than on their near-sighted "cost-cutting" where it belongs.
Meanwhile, the bean-counters will be gently wafting away on their golden parachutes, searching-out other American corporations to ravage.
Regards;
Purely out of curiosity, could any aircraft nerds confirm when the last major totally new aircraft (ie. not a refresh of an existing design like the 747-400) was? I'm fairly sure that with the exception of the A380, there hasn't been much new in some time.
We (overseas people) have the same right to get those jobs in a global economy. Thinking about protectionism is just stupid.
When you start outsourcing, you'll have problems with some suppliers. The rules of the game change a bit. It's up to Boeing to adapt, keep the good suppliers while leaving the troublesome behind. It's a transition for them, and surely bumpy, as any transition is. If they get it right, at the end they'll be more competitive, and earn money. That's what outsourcing is about: finding providers that are better than you in some areas, and exploiting that so their know-how combined with yours will create something superior.
I think Boeing will manage to weed out the bad suppliers with time.
Purely out of curiosity, could any aircraft nerds confirm when the last major totally new aircraft (ie. not a refresh of an existing design like the 747-400) was?
Probably the Boeing 777 if you're just talking big planes. But if you want to count regionals, then there have been some more recent models in the ERJs and CRJs.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
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+5 Fucking Epic
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
corrosion caused by water has even killed people _on_ airliners!