Boeing plans to ramp up production rates

An article in the Wall Street Journal (August 30,2012) describes plans by Boeing to add another production line in Washington, in addition to one in North Carolina, thus increasing production rate to 10 Dreamliners across locations per month from the current rate of 7. To contain costs, the company plans to have each assembly line in Washington do half the work in both lines, while adding new workers. This process will be repeated in North Carolina to increase production to 14 airplanes a month. Given the split of volume across two assembly plants, do you expect Boeing to maintain its planned learning curve and thus hit cost targets ? Given the large demand backlog, but gradual increase in rates, with consequent delay penalties, should Boeing speed up production even faster, even if production costs increase ? Are suppliers or assembly expected to be the bottleneck ?

About aviyer2010

Professor
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