Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [7]
At the time, Jackson was running two studies involving composites. One was a 737-size aircraft with a composite wing, which he hoped might even be built as a full-size demonstrator. The other was a composite fuselage, though with the structure comprising barrels made from composite panels rather than one-piece sections. Renton arranged for Jackson’s team to get full access to Phantom Works’ advanced composite specialists, “and by mid-2000 it started to look encouraging,” Jackson said.
The problem was how to get all this taken seriously in the upper echelons. This was 2000, and the large-scale use of composites for primary structure in the fuselage and wing was only recently emerging in combat aircraft and was unheard of in commercial airliners. Jackson needed to work the company system as much as the technology, and that could be just as risky, but the goals were worth it.
Jackson realized he needed the support of Phantom Works President David Swain. Working to his advantage was Swain’s directive to “sell” the Phantom Works and its advanced technology throughout the Boeing enterprise. Jackson needed Swain and vice versa. David Anderson, director of commercial airplane product development, and Peter Rumsey, director of new airplane product development, “tolerated my being more aggressive by going along with it,” recalled Jackson.
Renton worked with Jerry Ennis, Phantom Works’ vice president of advanced manufacturing, prototyping, and produce processes, to help Jackson’s cause. Ennis, who had come to the fore during the development of Boeing’s X-32 Joint Strike Fighter concept demonstrator, “came over from St. Louis and got me in front of Dave Swain, who was very encouraging,” said Jackson. “So we worked together and we came up with a proposal to show John Roundhill.”
Behind the scenes Swain, a veteran whose career spanned from the Gemini rocket to the C-17 airlifter, also worked the process at the very top of the company. He discussed the merits of composites with Boeing Chairman and President Phil Condit, who in turn passed along his recommendations to Alan Mulally. Condit and Mulally were both top engineers in their own right, and their endorsement of the radical composites plan was passed along the line to Roundhill.
NINETY-DAY STUDY
The scene was set, therefore, for a crucial evaluation of all the key technologies that would be brought to play in the next-generation airliner. “Staying close to Gillette, I went to see Roundhill and we put together plans for a multidisciplinary team that over three months would look at aerodynamics, structures, systems, and operations,” Jackson said. The so-called ninety-day study crucially included a Phantom Works contingent as well as Boeing’s commercial product development team.
The ninety-day study “had real high people” involved, said Jackson, and the authority to poach top people from various departments. “We spent about six weeks before that getting ready for the study. The preparation included going to each functional leader to get the best, most experienced person from that discipline to be dedicated full-time to the study. That way, the study results would be credible.”
The involvement of Phantom Works, a shadowy organization set up in the best traditions of Lockheed Martin’s supersecretive Skunk Works, also brought a new edge of subterfuge. “We put everyone in a dedicated, secret place. Phantom Works insisted on it, and we even had a vice president of security. They even put cables and chains in the ceiling to make sure you couldn’t get through the roof,” he recalled. The team set up at the Renton complex in a site across the