Posted on 04/10/2008 5:52:58 AM PDT by MHalblaub
WELLINGTON/TOKYO (Reuters) - Airlines lined up on Thursday for compensation after Boeing Co announced a further six-month delay for its new 787 Dreamliner plane, with Air New Zealand, Air India and Japan's two big carriers eyeing redress.
The U.S. plane maker announced the third major delay for the revolutionary plane on Wednesday, promising first delivery in the third quarter of 2009, more than a year after the original target of May this year -- with an indefinite delay for a short-range model favoured by the Japanese carriers.
Air New Zealand and Air India AI.UL said they would seek compensation. All Nippon Airways (ANA) , due to get the first 787 off the assembly line, and Japan Airlines said they planned claims after assessing the impact. [...]
(Excerpt) Read more at uk.reuters.com ...
Please, oh please don’t do an Airbus...
How can an experiance company like Boeing be this far off on their estimate?
I think the executive culture has changed over the last 10-15 years in all manufacturing companies. At one time the older, experienced engineers became department heads and moved on up the ladder. They knew how things worked and what needed to be done to get a product to market. Today many of those positions are held by "bean-counters" who only see the bottom line and have no concept of engineering problems and what it may take to solve them. As a result you get a product that doesn't perform as advertised or is the dickens to manufacture, driving up costs while producibility suffers. I work in a segment of the "military industrial complex" and too many times I've heard "we'll fix it later".
Maybe you should be reading Dilbert? Places like Boeing are infested with know-nothing managers who think that as long as they write (or borrow) some "procedure" and enforce it upon people who actually know what they're doing everything will turn out just peachy-keen. (Think of a modern day Leo Durocher telling Willie Mays not to make basket catches, and you'll get the idea.) Even worse, these managers look for subcontractors who run their operations the same way. Everything is about schedules and PowerPoint presentations, and little is about whether new things being developed are actually being developed or whether they might actually perform as promised.
At least from my little window, things are really f'ed up. (See my post from last August about the 787 schedule.)
ML/NJ
I read on another thread that outsourcing to the extent of the 787 project (70%) is one reason for the delays. Apparently Boeing does not have experiance with this degree of outsourcing.
You just described most of the wireless telecom industry, too. Were it not for no-nothing bean counters and big gubmint bureaucrats at the FCC, we would have had the wireless technology currently in use over 10 years ago......
..and so on.
“Vista” anyone? I hope they work better than Vista
They’ve already blown through eight contingency plans? I was willing to say they’re pushing technology here so give them a break because you never know what will happen, but this is starting to look like incompetence.
Probably the main reason is that that 787 is essentially built in sub-assemblies all over the world. Boeing just does design, testing & final assembly. Consequently you get delays when something 'doesn't fit right'. A lot of potential for delays.
The outsourcing of work all over the world to cut costs has blown up in their face.....
As I read it in the news it's about a redesign of the wing box. Boeing can't blame a Japanese contractor for delivering as designed by Boeing.
You have a WINDOW??!!
I am REALLY jealous.
But I do agree with your assessment.
I make my living testing new equipment or products in a lab and then preparing them for a production release.
We are being fed arbitrary timelines by our marketing division and told, "Make them work in our network."
We don't even have a say on what vendor to use. They bring us a vendor and tell us, "Make it work."
It's getting to the point that I put in 2 extra months on my estimates just to have wiggle room.
And I heard it was "wiring problems." Their PR people have to blame something, and it's best to blame just one thing. The one thing should describe something that the average guy can at least comprehend. Everyone knows what a "wing" and a "box" are so "wing box" is good, even though most people would guess wrong as to what a wing box is. Here's some good news from Boeing about the 787 wing box from July 2006! (July 2006!!)
ML/NJ
My 2 cents - all previous post so far sound very familiar to me, especially the ones about management and scheduling!
Please, oh please don’t do an Airbus...
It will be a big Airbug!
The manufacturer, which has orders for almost 900 of the new planes, was this week reluctant to discuss the cost of the delays but compensation to Qantas is expected to be more than the $202 million Airbus paid in fiscal 2006 and 2007 for delays to 12 A380s.http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23519014-23349,00.html
[...]
It is understood the Australian carrier may also bring forward its search for a Boeing 747 replacement to cover any long-term problems resulting from the 787-9 delay.
This could mean more A380s, or other alternatives such as Boeing 777s or Airbus A340s.
[...]
Mr Gregg was less confident than Boeing executives that the latest schedule would be the last of the delays.
Main source for the wing box problems was Steven Udvar-Hazy of International Lease Finance Company. ILFC ordered 72 B787. The “weakness” of the wing box was confirmed by Scott Carson, president of BCA. What has Boeing done since July 2006?
Leeham's summary
Mr. Udvar-Hazy also killed the first A350 design and forced Airbus to A350XWB.
The Escalating Woes at Airbus
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