Learning Curve with Respect to Labor Efficiency

Reducing Flow Time in Aircraft Manufacturing

Jackson S. Chao 

Boeing Company 

P. O. Box 3707, MS 03-26, Seattle WA 98121 2207

Stephen C. Graves 

A. P. Sloan School of Management 

MIT, E40-439, Cambridge MA 02139

The assembly of aircraft is a labor-intensive process that exhibits a significant learning-curve effect and that requires long flow times and costly work-in-process inventories. This paper describes the production context, the cost of flow time in this context, and some of the causes for the long flow times. We then develop an argument for a firm to use improvements in labor productivity to reduce flow times. Boeing has implemented the recommendations from this research and has obtained significant benefits from reducing flow times.

October 1992, revised February 1994, January 1996, January 1997

The authors wish to acknowledge MIT’s Leaders for Manufacturing program for their overall support of this research, and to thank Boeing for creating the opportunity. Special thanks go to David Fitzpatrick and Fred Farnsworth at Boeing, for their insights, knowledge and support throughout the conduct of this research. We would also like to thank Al Drake and Tom Kochan from MIT for their support and guidance. Finally we thank the referees for their helpful comments and advice, and Kal Singhal for directing us to the line-of-balance reference.

CONTENTS

* Introduction

* Planning of aircracft manufacturing

* Flow-time cost

* Impact of system variance on direct-labor input

* Impact

* References

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INTRODUCTION

In this paper we report the results from an internship performed by the first co-author at The Boeing Company, the world’s most successful airplane manufacturer. The internship was conducted as part of MIT’s Leaders for Manufacturing Program, and ran from June 1990 through December 1990 in the New Airplane Division (now known as the Boeing 777 Division). The charge for the internship was to...