The Boeing 787’s introduction to a fleet is something that anyone who follows the aviation industry has been looking forward to.  It was greatly disappointing that it did not meet its first flight schedule originally but anyone who follows this business was hardly surprised. 

What was a bit surprising was a 2+ year delay in that first flight.  However, Boeing was pushing its limits when it came to both technology and vendors.  In many cases, both were factors in various delays.  Boeing was right to push its limits, however.  If Boeing expected to be an aviation leader, it needed to stretch itself and it quite rightly did so in this project.  In addition, it was right to push its outsourcing as well.  Boeing had already experienced good partnerships in outsourcing other airliners production work such as on the 777.

Even with all that has happened over the past 3 years in the 787 program, I still think Boeing was right to push its technology development for this aircraft.  It remains a revolution for aircraft and continues to promise a great deal for airlines who use it. 

However, perhaps Boeing pushed its vendor outsourcing too much.  Actually, we knew they did when they purchased some vendor operations for the 787 outright.  I think that, perhaps, Boeing didn’t have as much knowledge about outsourcing as it thought it did.  It was, perhaps, viewed more like outsourcing on defense projects where such projects are often pushing the limits in every direction and commercial viability isn’t necessarily a key driver and meeting requirements is.

The latest announced delay finally frustrates me.  The vague references to instrumentation and the fact that “test programs” experience unknowns just doesn’t fly anymore.  As someone who works for a major aerospace and defense company, I’ve seen good programs and I’ve seen bad.  This one is starting to stink from an execution point of view.

The truth is, a lot of risk could have been reduced in the test program using time before the first flight to ensure systems were extra mature.  To a degree, it’s clear that was done in some areas and completely neglected in others.   Issues with the horizontal stabilizer and how it was manufactured and/or installed should have been identified before first flight.  There was so much time to staff and plan the flight test program, it should be going *faster* than its schedule, not slower. 

In short, I don’t think Boeing has done nearly enough to reduce risk on this program.  They keep getting surprised by things that just point to a too lean program and not enough investment in retiring risk.  Airlines have a right to be frustrated at this point.  Boeing has yet to have gotten their production up to anything above low rate initial production and its delays to allow manufacturers to catch up is shameful at this point. 

Those partners have had 3 years to figure out how to ramp up production and prevent traveled work from happening.  Having to “pause” the production to prevent traveled work at this point ought to be resulting in at least a few project managers getting fired.   At this point, the only thing that should potentially delay entry into service is flight test revealing a near catastrophic development found only in real flight test.  Seriously, all the systems should have an exceptional maturity and all the vendors and manufacturers should be capable of spinning up production beyond 2 to 2.5 aircraft per month. 

Lean is good but this program’s project planning and execution stinks of being run on the absolute best case scenarios with very little provision for managing risk and retiring risk along the various waypoints of development in a sensible and, more importantly, responsible manner. 

This aircraft will be a successful one.  I firmly believe it remains a game changer for airlines.  However, I’m left with a sense that Boeing continues to treat this program as “just another program” instead of treating it with a sense of urgency and acting as if its future depends on it. 

The fact that there is as little outcry over these latest announcements demonstrates just how little  this industry has come to expect from Boeing and this program when it comes to doing what Boeing says it is going to do.

Filed under: Aircraft Development by ajax