To achieve “right first time” successes, the Boeing Interiors group departed from the norm and used an automotive tool to reduce installation times from 3500 to 232 h on the 787 Dreamliner. How was this done? Was it with an exotic new composite material? Brilliant outsourcing? Robots?
Nope … just a smart way of performing rapid “what-if scenarios” to determine what would work and what wouldn’t. The process, Design Profit by Munro & Associates, was used and has been enhanced significantly to provide Manufacturing Readiness Levels, Technology Readiness Levels, a Producibility Index, and a Confidence Index. The method has been successfully tested in the defense, electronics, medical, and automotive industries to eliminate the guesswork from product development programs.
Before the 787, 7E7, and Sonic Cruiser, there was Yellowstone. The Yellowstone program was born in 2000—a time of Y2K, overcrowded hub terminals, the start of the ecology movement, and uncertainty of U.S. competitive manufacturing primarily from low-cost countries. As Boeing was working to develop something new to set it apart, they contacted Munro.
The company had worked with Boeing in the past and had successfully used its Design Profit/Lean Design methodology on the 777 in 1999. At that time, the combination Boeing/Munro team achieved a 30% cost and weight reduction on every system analyzed. And because the Yellowstone needed be the lightest and most cost-effective aircraft possible, Design Profit was a natural choice.
Munro’s efforts were focused on the interior (anything inside the fuselage), which contained about 30 major systems. Notably, most of these systems interface with the traveler.
Comfort, space, and ease of use were all important to the success of the aircraft embodying the new Boeing motto: “More than Just an Airplane.”
The interior team was chartered with driving a new world of cabin environment and a new sensation for passengers to enjoy. To be evaluated were the stow bins, galleys, lavatories, side wall liners, in addition to systems such as cargo, fluids, electrical, and HVAC. The focus was on rapid development and selection of customer-focused concepts and designs that previously were generated by marketing studies of travelers and airliners.
These customer requirements were programmed into the Design Profit software to develop the appropriate decision-making metrics. The styling from Boeing Design was breathtaking art but had to be built and installed with minimum labor and high “right first time quality.”
Like hanging a fine painting, one must have a solid anchor (enabling architecture) to support and showcase the piece. The same was true of the stowage bins. This enabling architecture was developed to:
• Establish the common foundations to build from
• Increase common installation and portability techniques
• Ensure standard design elements and attachments would always be in the right place.
In previously developed aircraft, much of the installation was purely operator-dependent, meaning many of the installation decisions were made by the installing technicians, increasing the potential for variation.
In theory, the enabling architecture developed through Design Profit projected an 80% to 90% reduction in installation steps. To ensure its success in actual application, the team used two tools from the automotive world—Pit Stop (or the wall) and Race Day (or pilot build)—which transferred nicely into the Boeing culture.
With Pit Stop, the team identified the potential issues prior to building a prototype. With Race Day, the design was tested on a full-size pilot build and achieved great success: interior installation time, including stowage bins, went from 3500 to 232 h. Additionally, the Design Profit software generated a sustainability model that calculated other key criteria, including: BTUs in manufacture through shipping and use; tons of CO2 generated over its lifetime; hazardous waste disposal; maintainability costs; and many other metrics that are critical to success.
Employing nontraditional thinking to incorporate automotive tools and techniques allowed Boeing to achieve great gains in the design and development of the 787 interior. One could call it a step-change in aircraft development.
