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Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner finally took flight Tuesday, more than two years behind schedule. The Dreamliner, with its sleek composite materials structure, is destined to become one of the great achievements of aviation history.
Airlines around the world have placed some $140 billion worth of orders for the fuel efficient mid-size plane, and in time it will serve as the basis for a new generation of passenger airliners.
To be certain, the Dreamliner still has significant hurdles to overcome, and faces another nine months of airborne tests before moving into full production. But this week’s test flight signals the beginning of final approach.
In time, analysts will be able to dissect what exactly went wrong in the development cycle of the Dreamliner and why costs soared – it’s been estimated Boeing has spent about $10 billion on the project to date. When they do perform that autopsy, they will find that computer technology played a significant role.
The Dreamliner has been plagued by a string of delays, ranging from parts shortages, to a labor strike, structural flaws, and logistics problems associated with transporting large structural pieces of the plane, such as the wings and fuselage from manufacturing sites in Japan, Italy and elsewhere. The most recent delay came when Boeing had to reinforce the side of the plane where the wing joins with the fuselage.
Technology, in the form of sophisticated computer-aided design packages, and logistics software, were meant to streamline and overcome many of the challenges associated with the revolutionary plane’s development. The Dreamliner represented one of the first large-scale tests of a relatively new breed of software called Product Lifecycle Management, or PLM, which allows manufacturers to simulate not only the design of a product, but also its production, operation and maintenance.
It’s clear the technology, or at the very least, the deployment of the technology, did not perform to expectations.
Boeing now believes it will be able to deliver the first Dreamliner to Japan’s All Nippon Airways in the fourth quarter of 2010, some two years after the original target.
Boeing and its technology partners will no doubt learn from this experience and improve their processes to mitigate future problems. But the Dreamliner does serve as an important reminder that despite the advances in computer-aided design and logistics software, projects of this magnitude are far from routine.
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