Boeing 787 Dreamliner - Mark Wagner [94]
Although Shanahan sounded some positive notes over progress on systems tests and fasteners, he was honest about the production problems. “If we’ve learned anything over these past three months it’s that we’ve underestimated how long it would take to complete somebody else’s work. We designed our factory to be a lean operation. We thought we could modify the production system to accommodate the traveled work from our suppliers, and we were wrong.”
Using so many temporary fasteners meant that the first fuselage sections arrived without adequate secondary support structure built into the upper crown area. As a result, the first Section 41 partially “sagged” when removed from its temporary support frame and was about 0.3 inch out of alignment with the midbody Section 43 when the two were mated in early June 2007. The worst mismatch was around the lower left-hand side of the fuselage, around the data port area. Mark Wagner
The irony was that the 787 production crisis was coming just as Boeing was breaking records for new orders. Business had never been better, with 1,413 net orders for 2007 easily outstripping the 1,044 orders taken in 2006, and exceeding 1,000 for an unprecedented third consecutive year. The numbers included new orders for the 787, which only added to the building pressure on production. The delays also impacted the suppliers, who, under the original risk and revenue deals signed with Boeing, would not receive payments until after 787 certification. A report in the Chicago Tribune the previous December said that suppliers wanted to renegotiate the terms of their contracts to help offset the impact of delays on cash flow for 2008.
Real progress came in February, when a Dreamlifter arrived at Everett with the first fully stuffed Section 41 from Wichita. The nose section for the second 787, ZA002, was complete with everything from windshield wipers to its radome. There was better news, too, on the remaining fuselage sections, which also arrived 50 percent more complete than they did for ZA001. But there was still plenty of work that traveled with them, and Boeing was now completely focused on revamping its production process to fix the problems.
Some of the fixes were small, while others were dramatically huge. On the factory floor, for example, Boeing reverted to its original quality assurance system, which had been discarded under the lean processes adopted for the 787. Going back to the original system enabled the huge number of “nonconformances” thrown up by the traveled work to be dealt with in batches by senior assembly personnel rather than by an individual rejection tag-by-tag basis under the newer system.
Deep inside the already complete wing root of ZA001 lay more trouble. Tests of the wingbox, identical to the structure at the heart of this area, revealed the need for extra strengthening. While newer production units were redesigned with additional ply layers, the existing boxes were reinforced in situ with about two hundred clips and five hundred extra fasteners. Mark Wagner
A much larger fix was Boeing’s acquisition in March of Vought’s interest in Global Aeronautica. Under the revised structure, Global Aeronautica became a 50–50 joint venture between Boeing and Alenia North America. The move marked a major step in Boeing’s recovery plan to regain oversight and management of key sections of the 787 supply chain. It enabled Boeing to better manage production schedules and control of the supply chain and allowed it to address directly issues such as staff training.
But yet more problems were coming. In March an analyst report by Goldman Sachs suggested that power-on would slip to June 2008, signifying a much more serious program delay. Analysts JSA Research dismissed the reports as “innuendo and rumor,” but, significantly, Boeing itself would not comment. Then within days, Steven Udvar-Hazy, the highly influential CEO of the leasing giant International Lease Finance Corp., dropped a bombshell. At a JPMorgan financial conference