Boeing 787 Dreamliner

Boeing Corporation

The Boeing Corporation is one of the largest manufacturers in the world. Rivaled only by European giant Airbus in the aerospace industry, Boeing is a leader in research, design and manufacture of commercial jet airliners, for commercial, industrial and military customers. Despite enjoying immense success in its market and dominating an industry that solely recognizes engineering excellence, it is crucial for Boeing to ensure continued growth through consistent strategy formulation and execution to avoid falling behind in market share to close and coming rivals.

Boeing is based in Seattle, Washington and was founded as Pacific Aero Products in 1916. Boeing’s product line includes commercial, business and military aircraft, space systems, electronic information systems and tactical weapon systems. Total 2003 sales were approximately $55 billion and Boeing delivered 281 commercial aircraft. Boeing uses its website to help deal with the economic and competitive airline industry.

Boeing’s internet site is extremely detailed and does a great job of outlining their business goals. There are links to Boeing’s global customer support, spares and logistic support, maintenance and engineering services, fleet enhancements and modification services and flight operation support. The key is to allow current and potential customers easy access to technical, financial and informational support. (Bruce W. Marcus, Sherwood Lee Wallace 1997)

This site offers virtual tours of all commercial aircraft – including videos and photographs. Boeing also offers information on industry topics like airport noise regulations, jetliner safety reports and world cargo forecasts. This web site also links users to airline industry magazines such as Aero Magazine and Commercial Airline News. Boeing’s internet site also provides links to its subsidiaries including Jeppesen Industries, Aero Info and SBS International. The subsidiary companies are vital in providing parts and services to the aftermarket industry.

Boeing’s internet site does an excellent job of promoting air cargo products, replacement parts and special services. Boeing probably uses a dynamic pricing strategy due to the fact that a single Boeing airplane costs between $35.5 million and $235.5 million. Boeing will obviously base pricing on each individual business deal.

Boeing 787 Development

The Boeing 787, or Dreamliner, is a mid-sized passenger airliner currently under development by Boeing Commercial Airplanes (BCA) and scheduled to enter service in 2008. It will carry between 200 and 350 passengers depending on the seating configuration, and be more fuel-efficient than earlier airliners. In addition, it is the first major airliner to use composite material in the majority of its construction. (Patrick A. Toensmeier 2005)

In 2001 Boeing moved its company headquarters from Seattle to Chicago. In 2007 Boeing introduced the 787 passenger jet aircraft, also called the Dreamliner. The 787 was notable for being the first commercial aircraft with a primary structure made largely of composite material, mostly carbon fiber-reinforced plastic (CFRP). Traditionally the structural framework of an airplane is made of aluminum. The 787 was dubbed the “first plastic airplane,” although earlier military aircraft, such as the B-2 stealth bomber, had been made largely of composite material. The composite material used in the 787 is stronger, lighter, and more resistant to corrosion than aluminum. The lighter weight of the 787 enables it to carry more passengers without using more fuel than an airplane with a traditional, aluminum structure. The 787 was known as the 7E7 (a pre-development designator) prior to January 28, 2005.

When 767 sales began to go the way of the Airbus A330-200 in the late 1990s, Boeing began to consider replacement aircraft. As the 747-400 was also beginning to lose traction, the company began to consider two new projects—the Boeing Sonic Cruiser and the 747X. The Sonic Cruiser was intended to achieve higher speeds (approximately Mach 0.98) while burning fuel at the same rate as the existing 767 and A330-200 products. The 747X would stretch the 747-400 and give it a composite supercritical wing to improve efficiency. (Philip Birtles 1998)

Boeing is initially producing three versions of the Dreamliner. The 787-3 is the short-wingspan version of the plane. Seating about 300 passengers, the 787-3 has an operating range of about 5500 kilometers with about 125 cubic meters of cargo volume. The standard-wingspan plane, termed the 787-8, increases operating range to over 14,000 kilometers, however it can carry no more than 250 passengers. While the long-wingspan Dreamliner 787-9 has only a slightly longer operating range than the 787-8, it's lengthened body sits up to 290 passengers and increases cargo volume to over 150 cubic meters. All three versions of the plane can comfortably cruise at Mach 0.85 while burning 20 percent less fuel than the planes they replace. Many of these performance breakthroughs are due to the large amount of composite material used in the Dream liner’s construction. Over half of the 787's weight will be composite material, as compared to conventional steel being used in only about 10% of the airplane. (Ron Pernick, Clint Wilder 2007)

Most of the composite material used in the Dreamliner will be in the airframe itself. The fuselage and wing structures are almost completely carbon fiber-reinforced plastic and titanium graphite laminate, and many other smaller components are made of similar materials. As the plastic does not rust, higher cabin humidity can be maintained, greatly increasing passenger comfort. The Dream liner’s plastic fuselage has special geometry which allows for extra-wide spacing between beams, facilitating unusually wide windows and doors. The lack of welds and rivets reduces component costs, and the super-light structure helps the Dreamliner achieve its remarkable fuel efficiency. However, concerns regarding composite material’s inherent crack and fatigue hiding properties have caused concern about maintainability. Critics note that conventional routine airframe examinations would not discover stress faults in the airframe, and that damage repair would be very costly.

Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner represents not only a break through in aerospace structures technology with its first-ever composite fuselage and wing, it also represents a major advance in large- scale global collaboration. The development process began with the Sonic Cruiser, a radically new concept for increasing the speed of large commercial jet transports. Early on, it was recognized that the same basic suite of technologies that enabled higher speed at acceptable cost, could also provide vastly superior operating economics (through lighter weight and lower maintenance costs) with today’s Mach .85 performance. After an exhaustive process working with the world’s major airlines, Boeing selected efficiency over speed and the 7E7 (later renamed the 787 Dreamliner) was born.

The formal development process began with the program launch in 2003 and recently has moved into initial production with the fabrication of the first major structures for airplane #1 at seven major production sites around the world (Alenia, Kawasaki, Fuji, Mitsubishi, Spirit, Vought and Boeing) and the start of major assembly of the wing at FHI’s Handa plant outside of Nagoya, Japan. The initial full-scale structural tests of the wing have been completed; the first fuselage sections are in production at four major sites around the world, and the first massive composite wing skins have been produced by MHI in their new facility in Nagoya. The 787 uses the same technology proposed for the Sonic Cruiser in a more conventional configuration. (Ron Pernick, Clint Wilder 2007)

Boeing claims the 787 will be at least 20% more fuel-efficient than current competing aircraft. One third of the efficiency gain will come from the engines, another third from aerodynamic improvements and the increased use of lighter weight composite materials and the final third from advanced systems. The most notable contribution to efficiency is the electric architecture which replaces bleed air and hydraulic power with electrically powered compressors and pumps. Technology from the Sonic Cruiser and 787 will be used as part of Boeing's project to replace its entire airliner product line, an endeavor called the Yellowstone Project (of which the 787 is the first stage). Boeing selected two engine types, the General Electric GEnx and Rolls-Royce Trent 1000, to power the 787, both placed in pods. (Ron Pernick 2007)

Significantly, this leaves Pratt & Whitney, which normally has an entrant in the market, unable to offer one of its engines to 787 customers. According to UTC CEO George David, Pratt & Whitney "couldn't make the business case work for that engine." Also, according to industry sources, Boeing may have wished to rely on evolved versions of existing engines rather than the higher-risk option of an all new engine from Pratt & Whitney. For the first time in commercial aviation, both engine types will have a standard interface with the aircraft, allowing any 787 to be fitted with either a GE or Rolls-Royce engine at any time. Engine interchangeability makes the 787 a more flexible asset to airlines, allowing them to change easily from one manufacturer's engine to the other's if required.

The engine market for the 787 is estimated at US$40 billion over the next 25 years. The launch engine for all three current 787 variants is the Rolls-Royce Trent 1000. Airbus has offered the competing A350 powered by a development of the Rolls Royce Trent turbofan, the Trent XWB. The launch of a new airliner can be expected to draw scathing comments from competitors, Boeing's doubt over the Airbus A380 and Airbus's mocking of the Sonic Cruiser being recent examples. The 787 is no exception as Airbus's John Leahy attempted to refute all of Boeing's claims.

Leahy openly criticized the large-scale use of composites in the 787's fuselage as being "rushed and ridiculous". Despite this criticism, Boeing built and tested the first composite section while examining the Sonic Cruiser concept nearly five years ago, making the 787 a significantly refined product.

The other breakthrough developed during this period was the creation of a whole new business model for global collaboration. Along with an advanced suite of design and collaboration tools developed with Daussault Systems, Boeing assembled a network of the world’s leading aerospace firms to participate in the early configuration development process and take primary responsibility for the detail design and manufacture of large integrated volumes of the airplane (Bill McGuire 2007). This diverse base of highly integrated partnerships has lead to vastly improved efficiencies through technology sharing as well as leveraging the differences in company and national cultures and their varied approaches to problem solving.

In the end, the true competitive advantage stems not from any individual technology, but rather from the combined ability to integrate intimate customer knowledge, to identify and develop the highest leverage technologies from around the world and to effectively marshal the diverse strengths of the global aerospace industry.

Tooling has already been an issue for the 787. Out of the first eight barrel sections that make up a single fuselage, one failed due to air bubbles in the layup. The cause was traced to a composite layup mandrel. Tooling made out of composites has a lot of drawbacks. Durability is one, rigidity another. Especially when heated in autoclaves, they have a tendency to move around. And when you are dealing with large structures, a little variability in the process or materials can make it difficult to control expansion and shrinkage. Boeing says 70% of the 787 has been outsourced; rival Airbus is relying on subcontractors for about 50% of its A350 plane, now in development. "This farming-out of the airplane's construction is revolutionary," says Richard Aboulafia, vice president at Teal Group, an aerospace consulting firm.

For decades, Boeing has outsourced a portion of the work on its planes, and its reliance on sub-contractors has risen with each succeeding generation of aircraft. But with the Dreamliner program, the aerospace giant has reached a point where its role has changed. It now functions less as a manufacturer than as a project manager, supervising its first- and second-tier subcontractors, each of which may rely on scores of more specialized subcontractors. Boeing handles final assembly, marrying the cockpit, fuselage, wings, and tail sections, which are completed elsewhere and delivered to its plant. "Boeing's objective is to get these 'supplier partners' to do as much heavy lifting as possible," Aboulafia says. "That gives small businesses more responsibility."

It can't supply a full list of subcontractors that are working on the project, but industry analysts estimate that their numbers are greater than the 900-plus that contributed to the 777, which began construction in 1990. Boeing spokesperson Loretta Gunter confirms that the processes used to construct the two planes are markedly different. "We have fewer first-tier subcontractors on the 787 than we did on the 777 because each is providing bigger components," she says. "Likewise, many of them are contracting out bigger jobs to their subs."

Boeing's new manufacturing template has captured the imagination of the aerospace industry. Recently officials from Airbus told analysts that the company will up its outsourcing to become more competitive. "For any company that wants to be successful in aerospace manufacturing, Boeing's new strategy is the way forward," says Aboulafia. "This is ultimately good news for small business."

In conclusion, responding to the overwhelming preference of airlines around the world, Boeing Commercial Airplanes has focused its new airplane product development efforts on the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, a super-efficient airplane. The key to this exceptional performance is a suite of new technologies being developed by Boeing and its international technology development team. Boeing has announced that the majority of the primary structure including the fuselage and wing on the 787 will be made of composite materials.