Boeing has increased the production rate at its 787 plant in Charleston, South Carolina, from three to four airplanes per month while construction progresses on a second assembly line expected to allow it eventually to meet a 10-per-month target. The rate increase comes as the company continues what it calls its join verification process to confirm that gaps between airplanes’ fuselage sections do not exceed specified tolerances. Some 90 Dreamliners remain in inventory at the plant in Charleston and in Everett, Washington, following the discovery of minuscule deviations from gap tolerances. The company expects to clear the inventory in Charleston by year-end and the total inventory by the end of next year, Boeing South Carolina site leader Lane Ballard told reporters on Tuesday during a pre-Paris Airshow event at the plant.
While the flaws in the 787 fuselage joins do not present what Boeing calls a safety-of-flight issue, they nevertheless added another element to the company’s troubles in recent years, led by the grounding of the 737 Max between March 2019 and December 2020. Since then, Boeing CEO David Calhoun has directed an effort to reverse the resulting damage to the company’s credibility and recover the reputation for engineering excellence it earned through the decades since its founding. Also appearing in Charleston, Calhoun recalled the challenge he faced when he assumed the leadership of the company in January 2020.
“I became the CEO of the company at an interesting moment in time…when we had one existential crisis that we were facing that was self-inflicted related to the Max,” he said. “As everyone knows, at that moment in time we accumulated 400 airplanes that were on the tarmac. We went through three rounds of certification or recertification of the Max. And every three months, we were disappointed as a company…and so we finally got to the end of the year and said maybe we should take a fresh look at this and own up to whatever failures we had.”
With that, the company remained disciplined and for a year responded to every FAA demand “whether we liked it or not,” said Calhoun.
The need for discipline now extends to Boeing’s approach to its suppliers, noted Calhoun, who further stressed the difficulties inherent in a “very large, very fragmented” supply chain. “Many of those suppliers make one part and they're the only supplier that makes that part,” he explained. “And when they fall down, they can't respond to a rate increase. We suffer, but we have to stay disciplined. We have to work with them. We can't just be mad at it. We can't call them out in the press.”
Calhoun opined that it would take until the end of next year before the industry’s supply-chain disruptions stabilize. Addressing questions about Boeing’s plans for much further into the future, he called for patience, noting that any new aircraft program must remain relevant for 50 to 80 years rather than 20. “What it takes to launch an airplane—a meaningful airplane that makes a difference—it’s a lot,” he noted, adding that GE began development of the carbon matrix in the engine that will power the Boeing 777X in the 1980s.