Boeing's processes for ensuring its aircraft are consistently built to company specifications are undergoing a major revamp-due in large part to lessons learned from 787 production-quality problems that halted deliveries for more than a year. The company's review of how 787s are built extended into a deep look at its quality management system (QMS) (AW&STDec. 6-19,2021, p. 14). To no one's surprise, the company discovered the need for improvements-both internally and at many suppliers-at almost every step between design and final production (see page 28). Among the outcomes: key changes including a more rigorous, gated process to tackle risk areas in technology, design and build. Underpinning the changes are a set of systematic enhancements to address an evident mismatch between engineering requirements and production capability. The new, gated process has been designed to ensure that no aspect of the engineering design is beyond the capability of the production system to complete the part or component. The result is an equal focus on design and production. In a related revelation, Boeing also decided that there needs to be a tighter integration between technology readiness levels and manufacturing readiness levels. Various initiatives dubbed "stability projects" have been introduced to help improve the assembly process for some of the more troublesome areas, such as the aftmost Sections 47 and 48 and the fuselage crown. Projects include enhanced bladder cauls used to form composite structures with internal cavities or to form hollow structures with a fully tooled outer mold line. The newer cauls have been applied to the tooling of the aft fuselage around the inner mold line and, in the case of the forward areas of Sections 47 and 48, have achieved a 100% pass rate against initial requirements, sources familiar with the 787 program tell Aviation Week.
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