Guy Norris/LOS ANGELES
Boeing is finalising confidential plans to introduce a new production concept for the 717-200 twinjet that uses methods adopted by the automotive industry and which have never been applied to an aerospace line.
The company aims to have everything in place for the switchover to the new system by mid-year. It says the move will reduce costs and increase efficiency as it ramps up to a production rate of 60 a year by 2001. "We are going to an altogether different concept to build the 717," confirms Long Beach director of operations, Michael Marino, who describes it as a "pulsed assembly line".
Boeing declines to specify details of the new process, which was secretly planned last year and formally agreed in November. Marino says, however, that the process will resemble an automotive assembly line, with aircraft moving along more rapidly than with the current system.
Discrete parts such as control surfaces and undercarriages will be attached as the aircraft moves, rather than most of the components being attached to the aircraft in one or two major assembly stages. "Today, we use fixed positions and we have to move stands away every time we change the position on the line. That costs a lot of money, which will now be saved," says Marino.
The new production system will take advantage of the space freed at Long Beach by the cessation of MD-80 and MD-90 production. The current 717 assembly line shared space with the former McDonnell Douglas/Boeing twinjet lines in another building. The MD-80 assembly space has been vacant since the third quarter of last year, while the MD-90 area entered the final stages of closing down in December, with the completion of the last aircraft for Saudi Arabian Airlines. The last MD-90 is to be handed over in February and the last MD-80 was delivered to TWA in late December.
The system is expected to be more adaptable to faster production rate changes, and to require less lead time than current methods. About 18 717-200s have been made using the traditional assembly process, and 33 are due for delivery this year.
Source: Flight International
