Boeing CEO says no more 'moonshots' after 787 Dreamliner ordeal After weathering a decade of delays, cost overruns, and technical difficulties with its latest high-tech aircraft, Boeing CEO James McNerney says the company isn't planning any more ambitious gambles like the 787 Dreamliner, but will instead focus on cutting costs and increasing production. According to a report by the Seattle …
I would say that the main difference is that if an Apple product fails, hardly no-one will be injured (I know there are some exceptions, burned buttocks and people blindly following their map app, but those are just that, exceptions).
On the other hand, is a Boeing product fails while in use, the consequences may be dire...
It seems to me that too many people (marketers?) think that "bleeding edge" means "We're one step ahead of leading edge" when it actually means "We tried to be too clever and cut ourselves."
You most definitely don't try to sell "bleeding edge" to your customers. You refine it to mere "leading edge" while it's still in your own laboratory/engineering works.
I was going to say that they're great to jam on whenever you have some spare time but inevitably, 'some spare time' turns into a variation of "Why are you still in your pyjamas!!!?? We're supposed to be at your mother's place in 15 minutes and you haven't even had a shower!!!"
For some reason, "But check this out - doesn't that sound cool!?" never seems to work . . .
you mean the 787 is like Win8.1 ? Please no. Have to admit I was baffled by wing crack issues. Sailplane builders have been using advanced fibre materials for decades. The later ones are state of the art and limit of technology. Not heard of any sail plane builder pulling a sailplane because the wings cracked.
'cause you haven't. They started doing it in the 1960s and the people like Gerhard Waibel and Ursula Hänle who designed the planes of those days were the exact same people who developed the manufacturing technologies (Ursula Hänle's book on fibreglass repairs was the standard on the subject for many years), and flew the planes themselves. Those people knew exactly what they were doing.
By contrast, the Boeing engineers who did the 787 mostly had learned their business working with metal. You design differently for metal, and though you can read about it a dozen times in books, it's not the same as finding out in practice. So they made mistakes, which was only natural. I admire them for trying, and for getting a vast number of things right. Will be a pity if Boeing really stop trying.
Side note: Of course the '60s sailplanes were made of fibreglass, not carbon fibre.
"the Boeing engineers who did the 787"
Much of what was traditionally Boeing territory on previous aircraft became subcontractor territory on the 787.
"[Boeing] investing heavily in developing new technologies"
The subcontractors did the pioneering.
From the article:
"The Dreamliner incorporates a number of groundbreaking new technologies, including a body composed mostly of lightweight composite materials, electrical flight systems in place of hydraulic ones, a power plant based on lithium-ion batteries, and even electronic dimmers for passenger windows in place of mechanical shutters"
Body composed of lightweight composite materials: subcontractors.
Electrical flight systems: subcontractors.
Lithium ion batteries: subcontractors.
Dimmers for passenger windows: subcontractors.
Subcontractors were also encouraged to self-certify that their stuff was flight safe,
More than ever, Boeing's role was frequently little more than that of a systems integration outfit (with a bit of brand management and final assembly thrown in too).
Non-technical analysis, relevant to subbing in general not just 787:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/01/21/what-went-wrong-at-boeing/ (adblock recommended)
Actually (not wanting to sound pedantic, but it's Friday, I'm still at work and have had no beer), the Boeing 720 was a shortened 707 (by about 9ft), with shorter legs. The 720B was the turbofan variant of the 720.
The first 720 was heavily used in the 70's by Led Zeppelin as a private jet. Very rock'n'roll.
Had a huge pile of gushing in it about the 787, because it was a shared-design airplane where all the suppliers got to take a stab at the design, much more so than usual.
Wonder what the authors have been thinking of the 787s teething glitches. Wonder if the collaboration model was in any way part of the issue.
Flew on a modern 737 variant with WestJet recently. That's an old plane family, but the new variant has obviously been back-ported with a lot of its younger sibling's DNA. Including fuel efficiency. So what Boeing's saying makes a lot of sense.
Ever in Seattle and need a rest from West Coast microbrews? Go checkout the factory (building current passenger jets) or the air museum (WW2/WW1/others). Pretty good tours.
One of the things Boeing does exceptionally well is turn out platforms that can evolve with the airline industry, both passenger and freight. It's really, really difficult to build any large physical system that has useful capacities for evolution in the business practices of your clients and not end up with a dangerously compromised design.
I bring that up because what they're talking about with maximizing the value of their new build investment is how they've always operated. They're not doing anything new, as far as company strategy, it has just been so long since a really new plane appeared that people have forgotten :)
The Dreamliner collaboration issue is one we've looked at very hard here at my place. We didn't make any parts for it, but we did make a lot of equipment and tooling our clients used to make parts for it. It was important for is to understand because we wanted to deliver to our clients with as little fuss as possible, here are my summarized conclusions.
On the technical side the collaborative efforts of all involved were a huge win. No matter how great teams or work groups are, there are things that become unconsciously embedded in how they do things. I can look at done things others companies in my space have made and know who made them, just from the way things are done. It's kind of like handwriting and spelling. Given a large enough sample or great familiarity the same things are perpetually repeated, often withou the creator realizing it. Getting input, even indirectly, by looking at someone else's solution to an unrelated issue is extremely valuable. Often you'll discover far better ways to do something and you can incorporate that into your work. But you can't do that if you're never exposed to the work and input of others.
On the financial side, collaboration didn't do so well. The embedded thinking I mentioned earlier usually has its roots in finances. Each group finds the best way to work with whatever financial philosophies are expressed within their organizations. Here at my place, for example, tooling and inspection equipment expenses are usually not questioned. The guys know what they need, just get it and get the job out. But I don't like buying equipment. Not so much because of the investment costs, but I preach 'simple machines are best for complicated work' very hard. Before I approve equipment spend somebody has to explain to me why the equipment we have won't work. Sometimes it really won't work and off we'll go to find something suitable. Sometimes it will work, the project team just needs to think about it some more. We are engineers, making do with what we've got and exceeding expectations is the job. So the yelling and sleepless nights are good for everybody.
But other places have different philosophies and while they may all be equally valid technically they may not mesh with the financial philosophies of someone else involved. When that happens costs tend to skyrocket past what everybody wanted. Poor financial fits in one place trickle down to everybody else. It's a real bitch.
The rub in all that is everyone is, rightfully, looking out for themselves so there's little real flexibility. But because everybody in a collaborative effort needs everybody else everybody ends up making changes to try and keep it all working. Unfortunately, no matter what you do overall costs are going to rise dramatically as everybody is rounding corners trying to help, but not so much they take a hit.
Sooner or later somebody has to step in and whip it all into shape & just move forward and deal with problems when they arise later. If you don't the project, literally, will never fly. The flogging is difficult in the extreme so people try to avoid it. Which is where Boeing kept screwing the Dreamliner up. They were too timid to move forward becsuse they feared fallout. It's a valid fear, but fear of risk which prevents risk isn't acceptable. You've got to move and there's a fuckton of good failover design and luck and you'll find out quick if you missed. But you've got to take the chance or you end up screwing everything up.
The outsourcing on the 7E7 seems to have been a disaster both financially and technically
Instead of the normal partnership model where BAe do the wings, Dassualt do the tail, etc they outsourced to outsourcers who outsourced to outscourcers.... until you literally had no idea which one man in a garage was building vital bits of your plane.
Come the downturn Boeing lawyers were flying around the country desperately buying up sub-sub-contractors who had gone bust before delivering some subsystem.
The other problem in aviation is the "when the document weighs more than the plane it is ready to fly" but Boeing subcontracted the design of the component to the maker bidding on it - for flexibility. Try writing an FAA FMEA for kit that you didn't design and have no idea how or why it was designed like that - assuming the maker is still in business and supplied you with any design documentation at all.
"I bring that up because what they're talking about with maximizing the value of their new build investment is how they've always operated. They're not doing anything new, as far as company strategy, it has just been so long since a really new plane appeared that people have forgotten :)"
Exactly. Build a core design (probably with bunch of new tech) and milk it for decades afterward. Thumbs up for the observation.
In 25-30 years his successor will start saying "It's about time we looked at moving the 787 on."
++1 on the factory and the air museum - the latter is a "Louvre for air geeks". The SR-71 hanging in mid-air in the main hall is just mind-blowing !
Wait what does the the Lockheed SR-71 have to do with Boeing? Surly this is like comparing Red Hat with Canonical the both do Linux, but are otherwise unrelated.
The air museum is independent of Boeing and have lots of cool stuff from many different manufacturers. They don't have an (intact) SR-71, but rather an M-12. Er, the M-12. And a Darkstar prototype!
And for you Brits there's a Harrier, in case you want to see a part of your own aviation history. (cough).
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Their first (or second) was the B29. The project was started after WW2 started, and they finished up with a plane only a couple of years later. In the day, the MOST expensive war time project (even more than the A-Bomb!). In 1940's money it was $3 billion. That today is much more than the cost of the 787. Of course, they didn't finance it themselves they has a nice partner willing to foot the bill. Still a massive undertaking.
Goes to show, when sufficiently motivated, lots of things are possible.
I don't know if the B17 counts as a "moonshot" or not. Some will debate this too.
It's easy when somebody else is paying the bill no-questions-asked. You can do whatever you like because it really doesn't matter - the company will not get in trouble no matter what you spend.
That's why Government projects always go over budget and are always late.
Budgets only get proper control when the risk is on the company itself, and overspend reduces its bottom line profit rather than increasing it.
So no, the B29 isn't comparable.
At least the a B17 got to the Moon! ref WW2 Bomber found on Moon", as reported & photographed by Sunday Sport National newspaper in the 1980's!!!
That papers headlines used to lighten & brighten my sundays trip to the Newsagent, never bought it thou
(honest, might be worth somthing now if I had and kept it!)
Its probably as truthfull as much of the garbage we are fed by the papers of today.
It doesn't make a lot of difference to me. The current generation of passenger jets is pretty similar to the previous generation in that I get where I'm going at much the same time feeling just as lousy. A Mach 2 airliner that worked with reasonable economy would be a 'moonshot'. The current jets, not so much.
A Concorde Mk2 would be indeed great - The first one is still a hell of a technical and political achievement. (French and English working together? I'ld get this cat herder job instead)
Unfortunately, the Mk2 would be as attractive as the first one, which was not only shot by its fuel hungry reactors, but mostly by the annoying sonic boom that reduced the number of routes it was allowed to be used on.
Also, any supersonic aircraft WILL be a fuel hog. Boeing studied a Mach 0.95 airliner a few years ago (instead of the standard Mach 0.8 or so of the standard ones), and this study concluded the fuel consumption would be too high to justify the extra speed.
I agree about Concorde.
But would like to note that apparently the fuel consumption per passenger per Atlantic crossing wasn't that much worse than on a 747 of the same time period. People often quoted the consumption of the afterburners, but those were only used for two short periods on an Atlantic crossing. Also comparing consumption per hour doesn't add up either. The cruising hight resulted in less friction, also Concorde was a very small, cramped and light plane.
Of course, compared to a modern plane, things have moved on, and we never seen what a modern Concorde would be like.
Most of the extra operational cost seemed to be down to maintenance. Which again had to be spread over fewer passengers.
I think you will find that one of the reasons that Concorde was such a fuel hog was because at supersonic speed the afterburners were on constantly.
It is only recently that planes have had the ability to "supercruise" ie cruise at supersonic speeds without an afterburner.
Whilst undoubtedly the use of afterburners contributed to the aircraft's poor fuel economy, Concorde didn't need afterburners to supercruise. It has spent more time at supercruise than all other supersonic aircraft combined*. It used afterburners briefly during takeoff, thence to accellerate through the sound barrier to M1.7 once it'd cleared land, after which point they were turned off and the aircraft continued to accelerate until it was time to descend.
I was lucky enough to enjoy a round-trip in the old bird before it was retired to know how much better flying can be, but I don't expect ever to see cost-effective long distance M2+ supersonic journeys in my lifetime. A number of 'Supersonic Business Jets' are on the drawing board or in various stages of development, and these have a better chance of economic viability in a world where the super rich have the capital but not the desire to travel with hundreds of other people on scheduled flights.
Concorde's promise of better travel for all was dashed by the profound increase in the cost of fuel, something which isn't ever going to go away. A 21st century Airliner carrying 200 or 300 people may well be more fuel efficient per passenger mile then Concorde was, but in comparison with subsonic travel, it's always going to munch through 2 or 3 times more fuel per passenger mile, and then there's the difficulty of flying over land without blowing people's windows out. Shame, really.
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercruise
"Also, any supersonic aircraft WILL be a fuel hog"
The trick is to go much _much_ higher than conventional aircraft (or even concorde). You'll need to package your air because there won't be enough to catch outside.
These would dip down to lower levels long enough to reboost.
A skipper could get around the planet in a few hours and use less fuel/seat than conventional designs but there are minimum distance requirements to think about too.
https://www.llnl.gov/str/Carter.html
Rather than being an Apollo-style moonshot, the 787 was more of a Soviet-style moonshot. The top management at the time (and still today) wanted to hurt the Seattle-area mechanics' (assemblers') union, which had a history of striking (only some of the time because management was trying to screw them over). Thus, they decided to move parts of the 787 work out of the Seattle area, to "partner" companies around the world. As a bonus (management thought), they required the partners to use their own money, not Boeing's, to design their part and build their tooling and factories. What could possibly go wrong with outsourcing big chunks of design and production?
The 787 fiasco was the result. It turns out the partners were nowhere as good as Boeing's in-house Seattle-area staff at design, at assembly quality, and at identifying and solving the early-year assembly teething problems. In fact, IIRC, the Italian partner won't be allowed to work with Boeing again, and wings, the most critical and proprietary part of the design, won't be allowed to be designed by non-Boeing staff ever again.
Vought, a US subcontractor, not only produced delayed structures, but incomplete ones, even after a few years of intensive on-site help from Boeing employees, so in the end Boeing had to buy all the Vought plants and employees doing the Boeing work and bring them in-house to get the work done right.
The 787 was a fiasco because top Boeing management tried to play small ball on a moonshot project. They failed to realize that their scheme reduced shorter-term capital expenditures, but at the cost of vastly increased integration risk -- the risk that the parts wouldn't fit and function properly together once they were put together to form a plane in Seattle. In the end, initial capital savings were overwhelmed by the extra capital, labor, and airline compensation costs of not getting the project done right the first time.
Good analysis. With the 787 they tried to change the process of design, development, production, and financing all at the same time. They should have expected that there would be snags which could hold up the whole process. Cut the pay for upper level managers to reflect their failure and raise the pay for all those technicians who made it fly in the end.
I looked forward to the blended wing SpanLoader or similar being tried. Even a quiet supersonic one day. Now pretty all planes become much same, same. I can understand management wanting a break from new projects to recapitalise, but sooner or later companies need to take a measured risk to keep ahead of the competition or utilise new technologies efficiently.
They probably said the same thing after the last moonshot, but all the senior people involved were long gone and the new bunch believe they were smarter and had better technology so even if they heard about problems from the last time they believe they will easily overcome them.
Around 2040 or so technology will have advanced a long way, all today's leadership will be gone, and they'll try another moonshot. Hubris is a constant in the universe.
What matters with a 'leading edge technology' company is simply that engineers
rather than beancounters are in charge. It really is that simple.
If, as suggested here, Boeing were more worried about beating unions than
the actually QUALITY of the new aircraft, then by definition they screw themselves.
They're idiots. They'll coast for a number of years, all the while losing their edge without noticing. The incremental improvements will mask internal stagnation and loss of core talent.
Then, when Airbus or China's Comac come up with the next mooonshot in ten years, Boeing will be utterly incapable of responding.
Designing aircraft isn't supposed to be easy.
"They're idiots. They'll coast for a number of years, all the while losing their edge without noticing. The incremental improvements will mask internal stagnation and loss of core talent."
No, they've got their core long-haul platform designed to last for decades into the future. They are now milking the 787 design for all it's worth, as was always the plan - just like the 747 before it.
You don't plan to milk any single aircraft over decades anymore. The original 747 was a desperate move - they had lost out to Lockheed with a military-transport design, and decided to make an airliner from it to salvage some of the investment, essentially on the sole backing of Mr Juan Trippe from Pan Am. They could never have planned for the success it turned out to have. Nonetheless, Boeing wouldn't be where they are today if they hadn't developed a few other planes between the 747 and 787 - just count from 4 to 8 and check. And of course they improved the 747 almost beyond recognition.
You have to milk the aircraft for decades. Remember, it isn't Boeing that gets to decide when new models of plane are needed. That is a market decision and right now airlines have about 12 years left to even pay off the used planes they bought when Eastern and other carriers were falling over.
Because you can't sell planes every day, you've got to be turning out upgrades, improvements, alternative configurations and those really fucked up, super complex revenue sharing arrangements airlines like to have with everybody.
Aircraft manufacturers invest in new airframes knowing it will take 10+ years to cover their investment, but they've got to have constant revenue or there won't be anybody around to upgrade or fix the planes in the future. Without milking core designs for decades there is no money in being an aircraft manufacturer.
But shouldn't you do both? Milk the current technology as you say, but continue to innovate and plan for the future? McNerney seems to be backing away from any long term plan or roadmap. His strategy seems quite similar to Ballmer's strategy at Microsoft. That can be quite profitable in the short run, but the long term consequences are damaging to the firm's business.
"The original 747 was a desperate move - they had lost out to Lockheed with a military-transport design, and decided to make an airliner from it to salvage some of the investment"
They could have walked away from it and still been profitable.
If the 747 had failed, Boeing would no longer exist. They bet the farm on the thing.
And in ten years, McNerney and the other members in the executive suite will be long gone, nicely retired and still collecting fat checks. Not their problem anymore if other companies have driven Boeing out of business.
It pretty much the same business strategy the McDonnell-Douglas executives followed, and they made out like proverbial bandits.
The statement was to reassure shareholders that there isn't going to be another planned disaster anytime soon. That probably doesn't matter, the shares are actually held by high frequency trading algorithms in hedge funds - who don't listen to calming CEO words.
It does mean that it will be impossible to hire any decent employees in Seattle. Come and work for Boeing - and you will do routine boring work for 30years, or go to a commercial space flight startup?
The Advanced Passenger Train took on a whole host of new features, tilting, new brakes, new construction. And had the same level of problems as the 787. But, now, we have tilting trains, better brakes, and better construction. The lessons learned on 'moonshot' projects are always useful, and presumably, Boeing will learn, and their plane will benefit.
With our technical advances are often binned by poor management understanding of development program & ignorant UK press. For example its been sold back to us in the form of the Italian Pendolino!
Boeing often benifits from bleeding edge risks, didn't they gain considerably when we shared the invalueable airframe fatigue data from the Farnbourgh Comet tests post tragedies, so they could check, revise & enhance the 707 performance & saftey?
Funny we never see 2 way traffic from the special relationship.
The obvious snag here, of just doing what you're best at, is that, yes, the costs do fall and profits rise. But ulimately someone who has spent the money comes along and takes the whole market. It happened with NCR (Natrional Cash Register) they stayed with mechanical systems, which they had developed to perfection. When along came the digital age and they had no experience or expertise. Straight down the plughole.
Boeing moved their headquarters to Chicago from Seattle partly because the management weren't interested in the designing-and-building-airplanes aspect of their business.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2013/01/21/what-went-wrong-at-boeing/
"In the interview, Condit makes no secret of another factor: as CEO, he didn’t want to be bothered with tiresome “how-do-you-design-an-airplane stuff,” or boring meetings with Boeing’s key customers (airlines) who came to Seattle"
Their fundamental problem with the 787 development was excessive outsourcing. Sadly engineers within Boeing knew full well what would happen.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub/2011/02/04/2014130646.pdf
Like car makers, GE and IBM, Boeing is now really a hedge fund that happens to make stuff.
When you can make more profit in a year from switching your corporate leasing contracts to the right tax treaty on the right day - than you do from making the things with your name on it, then it makes sense to not bother with the boring aircraft stuff
"Like car makers, GE and IBM, Boeing is now really a hedge fund that happens to make stuff."
Yeah, there's a British company that does that too. Wish I could remember the name.
GEC?
What happened to them?
Oh.
[Oversimplified summary: for decades, top management deliberately didn't invest in in-house technology or people development, they put the cash under the bed instead, on the basis that if they needed R+D they'd buy it in or set up a JV as and when.
'The markets' loved the cash mountain, until GEC fell so far behind that they demonstrably couldn't catch up and 'the markets' turned against them. I watched the shares go from £12+ to 2p or so in a couple of years around 2001. ]
Can it just be that a team will always beat a a group of individuals? Outsourcing breaks the job into a series of discreet projects, making essential communication, its speed, iteration of solution, sharing of technical breakthroughs or dangers, team building & much much more, difficult if not impossible. Examples MRCA, Eurofighter, F35, & 787 all demonstrate what can & will go wrong!
Was not the success of the Skunk works built upon a close knit multidisciplined team to the extent of desks touching plus Kelly Johnsons iron rule & genius? Results cost effective designs including the SR71 to the Stealthfighter.
So the real suprise about the 787 is that there is a suprise!
@GN. Close. Kelly Johnsons management style meant the engineers and metal bashers had the right and responsibility to advise Kelly of _any_ construction issue within their competence. Ie Kelly managed, not did the suit thing. The close proximity of managers, designers, engineers and metal bashers made this workable. See SkunkWorks by Ben Rich. Compare the YF12 development or the first biz jet development with the F117 prototype Pave Blue. AFAIRC 8 guys in a room to 240, all of whom did not give a stuff about the technology, just the rulez and paperwork. Sounds like Boeing have management that have inhaled the "any manager can manage anything " fairy dust that is so fatal to any enterprise. But then, the leading elites have become completely disconnected from reality over the last 30 years. See Saul Ralstons "Voltaires Bastards, the dictatorship of reason in the west"
I suspect Brazil may have some surprises in aircraft in a decade too while the Russians also have some very good engineers. Some of their prototype fighters make the F35 look mundane. They also have range, something the yanks and europeans seem to have ignored. In the meantime, I am waiting for the Perlan Project to build a sailplane that can go to 90,000 feet. Yes its possible to glide that high at one place on earth. Now that will be a composite wing of fascinating properties.
I am glad the article mentioned that electronic window shutter stuff. I did not know. Enough reason for me to never fly a 787.
Giving someone else the capability to stuff me inside a windowless tube, prevent my ability to lift it up just a few centimeters for a few seconds, occasionally during the flight??? Hell no! Even flight crew should not have that much control.
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