Sunday, January 20, 2008
An aerospace version of open source was found wanting this week as Boeing announced (New York Times) another delay in their 787 Dreamliner program.
Almost every aspect of the aircraft is outsourced — built elsewhere and brought home to Seattle for final assembly.
The premise, simple, the promise worthy: specialists can be easily procured and the massive costs controlled through tender. (Boeing’s main competitor, Airbus, already employs a global collaborative design and manufacturing approach.) But the reality of creation by committee has disturbingly manifested itself.
As too few suppliers were able to deliver completed assemblies, Boeing has brought home virtual baskets of bits, in the hopes that their own technicians will be able to sort through the mess and assemble a proper aircraft.
Meanwhile, Rolex SA of Geneva has adopted an opposite initiative: vertically integrating every aspect of their watchmaking. While many of their legitimate competitors still outsource even the fundamental movement, Rolex strives to conceive design and manufacture virtually everything in-house: a foundry casts their own gold alloys; avant-garde magnetron sputtering coats dials atomically with gold; Rolex developed, patented and manufactures their own paramagnetic blue Parachrom hairspring — just to boost precision by mere seconds per year.
Realistically, collaboration is only ever a matter of degree. Little, if anything, ever gets done purely through the effort of any one individual. Nevertheless, should Boeing ever get a 787 assembled, and I find myself strapped into one, I suspect I’ll be particularly vigilant for peculiar squeaks and groans (beyond my own).
Doesn’t help that one of their 777s dropped short of a runway this week when both engines quit without warning.
Doesn’t help at all.
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