The design and production strategy employed by the $55 billion, Chicago-based aerospace giant to get the 787 built as quickly and economically as possible involves an unprecedented degree of collaboration between Boeing and its partners around the world—partners who are participating in the actual design of the plane. All of which marks a shift in the way Boeing defines itself: The company is no longer just a manufacturer, but also a high-end systems integrator. “We are a technology company,” says Scott Griffin, Boeing vice president and CIO.
The reasons Boeing is making the shift go beyond the savings it hopes to enjoy by making the planes faster and cheaper. The company is also spreading the costs of design and development throughout its partner network, and building global relationships that may, in turn, help the company sell its planes overseas.
The previous state of the art in aviation manufacturing was to have global partners work from a common blueprint to produce parts—actually, whole sections of the airplane—that were then physically shipped to a Boeing assembly plant near Seattle to see if they fit together. There, successive iterations of the planes were built and refined with onsite teams from around the world.