Supplier snafu prompts Boeing to delay 787 Dreamliner

Thursday, 11 October 2007

Page 2 of 2 The first flight of Dreamliner 1is now anticipated around the end of first quarter 2008. There are currently six preliminary Dreamliners in some stage of completion at Boeing’s Everett assembly facility. Carson said in order to resolve some of the production problems, Boeing sent personnel to the facilities of all of its supply line partners, including those in North Charleston. “We have a lot of people in (North) Charleston, helping,” Carson said. While he didn’t say exactly how many Boeing workers are now in North Charleston, he said they’ve been there for over a month, and are primarily charged with “giving the (production) process time to mature.” “I like the (North) Charleston facility,” McNerney said. “I like the fact that Vought and Global Aeronautica are side by side out there. “If there’s a lesson learned from this experience, it’s that we should have started earlier and had more training and gotten the workers out there more familiar with our processes. There is no fundamental flaw in Charleston.” Lynne Warne, a Vought spokeswoman, said Boeing’s increased presence in North Charleston is “not unusual or unexpected given the complexity of the new advanced composites program.” Warne, who is based in Nashville, said to the best of her knowledge no employee meetings were held in North Charleston to address Boeing’s announcement. “The entire South Carolina campus is working closely with Boeing to support the 787 program and its requirements,” she said. Lee Kurtz, manager for corporate communications at Global Aeronautica, did not respond to a request for comment. Despite assertions from some financial analysts that the inexperienced work force in Charleston may have added to Boeing’s headaches, officials at Trident Technical College, which trained the workers, stood by their program. In a written statement, Russell Darnall, vice president of the S.C. Technical College System’s Economic Development Division and director of ReadySC, the arm of the technical college system that is responsible for delivering the training, said, “ReadySC, a program of the Center for Accelerated Technology Training, has designed and delivered training to employees of both Global Aeronautica and Vought in support of the Boeing Dreamliner project. “This training team, located at Trident Technical College, continues to respond to the growing needs of the project. Feedback from both Vought and Global Aeronautica indicates that we continue to meet and exceed all training specifications and requirements.” Boeing’s announcement shocked a stock market already weakened by a United Auto Workers union walkout at Chrysler facilities across the country. Within minutes of the start of the conference call, Boeing’s stock had fallen 2.7% to $98.69. But because Boeing is one of 30 companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrials, its announcement had a profound effect on the overall market, accounting for 22 points of the blue-chip index’s loss for the day. But if Boeing’s announcement was something of a broadside to the financial markets, there had been earlier signs of growing pains for the 787 project. Last January, for instance, the 747 Dreamlifter, a specially-designed aircraft used to ferry Dreamliner parts to and from facilities all over the world, made a special flight into Charleston to deliver missing clamps and fasteners to the Vought facility. Then, on July 8, Boeing debuted a partially unfinished Dreamliner 1, describing it as the first 787 to roll off the assembly line. Although 15,000 were invited to view the aircraft’s roll out in person, and workers from around the world, including those at the North Charleston facilities participated in the event via remote transmission over Boeing’s Web site, the aircraft was in fact held together by thousands of temporary fasteners and had to be almost completely disassembled afterward. Suppliers had yet to install wiring and other critical components, Boeing officials admitted. Finally, on Sept. 5, Boeing pushed back the first test flight to mid-November or mid-December because of complications with final assembly and finalizing flight-control software. That last bump in the road proved the most critical, as it eliminated what was left of the margin to accommodate unexpected issues in the Dreamliner production schedule. McNerney said pushing back the delivery schedule restored that margin. “Our fundamental production plan is working,” he asserted. “It’s just taken longer than expected to work the kinks out of a new supply chain model.” Carson even went so far as to say if there is a silver lining to “the cloud tied to the out-of-sequence production work and the parts shortages, it’s that it gives us more time to work on issues related to the significant flight-control software utilized in the Dreamliner. “This delay will give us much more time in the lab to work on the technology and to give it time to mature,” he said. In a written statement, officials with All Nippon Airways, which was to have taken delivery of the very first 787 Dreamliner next year, said they “regret that the delivery of the 787 will be delayed” and that they “hope to keep the impact of the delay to a minimum.” << Start < Prev 1 2 Next > End >>