Making more planes

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting story on process changes at Boeing that aim to produce more 737s without having to expand the size of their Renton, Washington, factory (Boeing Teams Speed Up 737 Output, Feb 7). The scale of what they are trying to do is pretty impressive. Workers here recently boosted 737 [...]

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Not All NonStop Flights Are Created Equal: Some Stop for Refueling

Wall Street Journal had several articles on Continental Airlines flights to the East Coast from Europe that have been forced to make unexpected stops in Canada  (and smaller airports on the east coast) to fill up their fuel after running into unusually strong headwinds. (“Nonstop Flights Stop for Fuel“, and “With Few Options, Continental Could [...]

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Boeing Delivers First Dreamliner.

Finally, after many delays, Boeing delivered the first Dreamliner. The Wall Street Journal, which has been following the development closely throughout the years, had a nice article about the topic (“For Boeing, It’s Been a Long, Strange Trip“): Boeing—eight years after it began developing the ultra-efficient jet—is still trying to prove it can make a [...]

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What does 16.2 billion dollars worth of inventory look like?

So last week the Lariviere clan was on vacation in the Pacific Northwest. One of the highlights of the trip (to my mind) was a visit to the Future of Flight in Everett, Washington, which features a tour of the Boeing factory that makes 747s, 767, 777, and 787s. How cool is that? According to [...]

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Boeing’s ramp up and the cost of supervising suppliers

Flightglobal.com had a very interesting and thorough article about Boeing (h/t to Ben Thompson). The article specifically focuses on the attempts made by Boeing to smooth the ramp us process it is going through. (“Boeing aims at smooth ramp-up“) Boeing has gone through two events that define their attitude towards this ramp up. First, the [...]

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The Boeing Dreamliner Revisited (…again)

The NY Time had interesting news on the continuing saga of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner (“In-Flight Fire Endangers Delivery Date for Boeing 787“) We have written several times about the Dreamliner, but it is important to remind the readers that the Dreamliner is innovative along multiple dimensions, most significantly in its materials (and thus its [...]

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What about design?

One aspect of operations we have yet to touch on in this blog is design. Within operations it is clearest to focus on how to build products or deliver services. But there is an initial question of how do you decide what the specifications of the product are or what the characteristics of the services [...]

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