Insiders note an “eerie” calm at Boeing Co’s 737 MAX factory, formerly a bustling hub that has helped fuel the aviation industry’s record growth over the last two decades.
Weeks after halting production of the 737 MAX, which has been grounded for almost a year over fatal crashes, Boeing is seizing on the lull to conduct an overhaul at its Seattle-area factory to curb inefficiency, improve quality and ease the plane’s re-entry to the market, four people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
Backed by engineers from roughly a dozen suppliers such as fuselage maker Spirit AeroSystems and robot maker Electroimpact Inc, Boeing is fixing inventory management, upgrading automated tooling, and addressing “high-defect” areas, three of them told Reuters.
Boeing is also working to reduce instances where workers leave tools, rags and other debris inside jetliners as they build them, a problem at multiple Boeing factories. On Friday, Boeing said it found “foreign object debris” inside dozens of stored 737 MAX jets, and was investigating the cause.
A Boeing spokesman told Reuters the company was using this time to work closely with suppliers on a dozen initiatives to improve the overall health of its production system.
“The objective is to ensure a healthy and stable system that is ready for resuming production and increasing rates at the appropriate time,” the spokesman, Bernard Choi, told Reuters.
While Boeing has long said the Renton plant is already the most efficient in aviation, such longstanding problems were viewed as too risky to address during years of helter-skelter production to meet record jet demand.
Even before the 737 MAX grounding, the production of aircraft wings had been partially automated by robots. But concerns that missteps might harm deliveries, hurting profit, prevented a complete forensic study of the decades-old plant, two of the people said.
Now, Boeing and other aerospace companies are focusing more attention on improving production systems rather than adding to their already-bulging order books. And for Boeing, the hushed MAX assembly lines have abruptly brought that effort into sharper focus.
While production stability is expected to prevail over market share in the short term, fine-tuning the plant could help determine the MAX’s market position over the long term.
(Reuters)
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