Boeing Dreamliner

The Boeing Company

Introduction

The Boeing Company is one of the worlds largest US based aerospace company which is founded by William Boeing in 1913. Boeing manufactures defense, space and security systems and commercial airlines. Boeing is well known for its wide range of products and services which include commercial and military aircrafts, weapons, satellites, electronic defense systems, launch systems and information and communication systems (Boeing, 2013). One among the list of products listed above, we will be discussing about the prestigious commercial airplane of Boeing i.e. Dreamliner 787.

From past 4 decades, Boeing has been the leading manufacturer of commercial jetliners. Boeing commercial airplanes - is a business division of the Boeing Company with its headquarters located in Renton, Washington (Wikipedia, 2013). Since beginning, Boeing’s commercial jetliners are named 7X7 series with first one Boeing 707 launched in December, 1957 (Wikipedia, 2013). Other jets released to date include 737, 747, 757 (Ended on 2004), 767, 777, 787 with 787 being the latest.

Boeing 787 Dreamliner

The first Boeing 787 Dreamliner was delivered to Japan’s ANA in 2011, nearly 40 months after the planned delivery date. The expected delivery was in May 2008 where as the major changes in design and supply chain led to an unexpected delay (Keri E. Peterson et al, 2013). The fuel efficient 787 Dreamliner‘s manufacturing has become complicated due to multiple changes implemented all at once. Far from the traditional manufacturing, Dreamliner design consists of many new features like unique design, one piece fuselage, reduced weight, 20% increase in fuel economy, and reduction in maintenance time. Apart from the changes in design, another major difficulty was the company’s global supply chain network (Keri E. Peterson et al, 2013). Boeing has significantly changed the production process along with design changes. In addition, Boeing outsourced...