Boeing Dreamliner

Product Lifecycle Management system in managing the "design and production processes for Boeing's 7E7 Dreamliner." The life cycle management system "outlines the role of the key element to be included in this project that includes the virtual product development concept, the virtual product management system, the virtual reality center, and the Falcon Global Test Bed" (Taverna, 2004).

Application of Best Practices

Two best practices in project management that could be applied to the project to ensure its success is to maintain tight control by the project manager on the various aspects of the project and to control the number and complexity of changes allowed in design or production processes after the start of the project.

Hollmann (2003) discusses the pressures that several decades of downsizing and outsourcing have caused for many industries. Boeing has had difficulty in this area already, though its experience was several years ago. Boeing decreased its workforce so drastically that it could not efficiently take advantage of new government contracts and had to hire inexperienced, unproven design personnel. Though Boeing will be outsourcing much of the subassembly work associated with the Dreamliner project, it maintains its own design and project management personnel to provide greater accountability and incentive for bringing the project in on time and within budget.

Boeing also practices astute change control in all its projects, and there is no reason to believe that the Dreamliner project will prove to be an exception. One of the greatest threats to any project is failing to properly define it at the outset and changing aspects of it well after it begins. Not making changes obviously needed results in an inferior, or worse, product; adding all the changes that possibly could be made has the effect of delaying the project and preventing it from being completed on time. As Boeing 787 Dreamliner project manager, it is paramount to maintain tight control of...