The Boeing Company, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, is one of the next, although once the wheel assemblies have been installed, the two major producers of aircraft in the global market. The other the plane is towed to the remaining stations. major producer is European Airbus. Finished planes are painted in one of two separate buildings. Boeing produces planes in Everett, Washington. The planes are all Painting usually adds 400 to 600 pounds to the weight of a plane. produced in the same building. At any one time, there may be as many The painting process involves giving the airplane a negative as six planes in various stages of production. Obviously, the building charge and the paint a positive charge so that the paint will be must be fairly large to accommodate such a huge undertaking. In fact, attracted to the airplane. the building is so large that it covers over 98 acres and is four stories high, making it the largest building by volume in the world. It is so big Testing and Quality Control that all of Disneyland would fit inside, and still leave about 15 acres for Boeing has extensive quality control measures in place through- indoor parking! The windowless building has six huge doors along one out the entire design and production process. Not only are there side, each about 100 yards wide and 40 yards high (the size of a foot- quality inspectors, individual employees inspect their own work ball field)-large enough to allow a completed airplane to pass through. and the work previously done by others on the plane. Buyers' Boeing sells airplanes to airlines and countries around the inspectors also check the quality of the work. However, in light of globe. There isn't a set price for the planes; the actual price several crashes of Boeing aircraft in recent years, there has been depends on what features the customer wants. Once the details an increased attention both to inspections and to pilot training. have been settled and an order submitted, the customer require- There are 60 test pilots who fly the planes. Formerly, planes ments are sent to the design department. were tested to evaluate their flight worthiness in a wind tunnel, which required expensive testing and added considerably to Design product development time. Now, new designs are tested using a Designers formerly had to construct a mock-up to determine the computerized wind tunnel before production even begins, greatly exact dimensions of the plane and to identify any assembly prob- reducing both time and cost. And in case you're wondering, the lems that might occur. That required time, materials, labor, and wings are fairly flexible; a typical wing can flap by as much as space. Now they use computers (CAD) to design airplanes, avoid- 22 feet before it will fracture. ing the cost of the mock-ups and shortening the development time. Re-engineering The Production Process Boeing is re-engineering its business systems. A top priority is to Once designs have been completed and approved by the cus- upgrade its computer systems. This will provide better links to sup- tomer, production of the plane is scheduled, and parts and mate- pliers, provide more up-to-date information for materials manage- rials are ordered. Parts come to the plant by rail, airplane, and ment, and enable company representatives who are at customer truck, and are delivered to the major assembly area of the plane sites to create a customized aircraft design on their laptop computer. they will be used for. The parts are scheduled so they arrive at the Another aspect of the re-engineering involves a shift to lean plant just prior to when they will be used in assembly, and imme- production. Key goals are to reduce production time and reduce diately moved to storage areas close to where they will be used. inventory. Time-phasing shipments to arrive as parts are needed helps to Boeing wants to reduce the time that a plane spends at each keep inventory investment low and avoids having to devote space work station from 5 days to 3 days, a reduction of 40 percent. Not to store parts that won't be used immediately. only will that mean customers can get their planes much sooner, it There is a trade-off, though, because if any parts are missing or will also reduce labor costs and inventory costs, and improve cash damaged and have to be reordered, that could cause production flow. One part of this will be accomplished by moving toward late- delays. When missing or defective parts are discovered, they are stage customization, or delayed differentiation. That would mean assigned priorities according to how critical the part is in terms of standardizing the assembly of planes as long as possible before add- disruption of the flow of work. The parts with the highest priorities ing custom features. This, and other time-saving steps, will speed up are assigned to expediters who determine the best way to replace production considerably, giving it a major competitive advantage. the part. The expediters keep track of the progress of the parts Boeing also wants to reduce the tremendous amount of inven- and deliver them to the appropriate location as soon as they arrive. tory it carries (a 747 jumbo jet has about 6 million parts, including In the meantime, a portion of the work remains unfinished, 3 million rivets). One part of the plan is to have suppliers do more awaiting the replacement parts, and workers complete other por- pre-delivery work by assembling the parts into kits that are delive tions of the assembly. If the supplier is unable to replace the part in ered directly to the staging area where they will be installed on a time frame that will not seriously delay assembly, as a last resort the aircraft, instead of delivering separate parts to inventory. That Boeing has a machine shop that can make the necessary part. would cut down on inventory carrying costs and save time. The partially assembled portions of the plane, and in later Boeing is also hoping to reduce the number of suppliers it has, and stages, the plane itself, move from station to station as the work to establish better links and cooperation from suppliers. Currently, progresses, staying about five days at each station. Giant over- Boeing has about 3,500 suppliers. Compare that with GM's roughly head cranes are used to move large sections from one station to 2,500 suppliers, and you get an idea of how large this number is