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Logistics solution lifts Boeing to new heights
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
It was the kind of challenge all businesses, large or small, face: How do you most effectively move vital resources into your facility and produce a product with a reasonable profit margin?
In the case of Boeing Co., addressing that question a few years ago wasn’t a matter of simple efficiency and day-to-day business continuity. It was a matter of the company’s survival.
For years the aerospace giant had been the poster child of manufacturing decline in the Pacific Northwest, with many of its longtime factory jobs disappearing.
The 787 project, for which North Charleston and its new Vought Aircraft Industries and Global Aeronautica plants are playing a pivotal role, is the lynchpin that’s turned the company’s fortunes around.
To date, Boeing has firm orders for nearly 600 787 Dreamliners, compared to just 13 firm orders for Airbus’ much-delayed A350 aircraft, its only viable competition in the passenger aircraft field.
Boeing has promised to roll out its first 787 on July 8, with test flights expected in the fall.
The delivery of the aircraft to All Nippon Airways Co. Ltd. currently is scheduled for May 2008.
Solving the extraordinary logistics puzzle created by developing a new kind of passenger aircraft fashioned largely from composite materials has been the key to making it happen.
“There’s no question that the pressure’s on us,” said Gary Blattenbauer, Boeing’s North Charleston-based senior manager for 787 Global Logistics, at the recent S.C. International Trade Conference held at the Charleston Place Hotel.
“Given the extraordinary customer demand for this aircraft, our supply chain must be both effective and efficient,” he said. “The question we had to solve was how to achieve those goals. Ultimately, the decision came down to the Dreamlifter.”
A radically revamped Boeing 747 that looks like a cross between a whale with wings and a futuristic space vehicle, the cargo hauling Dreamlifter has made several trips in and out of Charleston International Airport in recent months.
Most of those trips involved delivering components to North Charleston from Boeing contractors in Italy and Japan. As of last month, they also include trips delivering assembled parts from North Charleston to Everett, Wash., where Boeing engineers will fashion the huge Lowcountry-built fuselage sections into the finished aircraft.
“Once the determination was made to build the individual sections in several different, far-flung locations, the question was how you go about moving these large pieces and getting them to their destinations in time with your production schedule,” Blattenbauer said.
“You can’t just put them on a ship or train to move them, and because these are high-value pieces, you don’t want them to sit in a logistical system for any appreciable amount of time.”
In addition to speed and efficiency, the Dreamlifter also provides Boeing with peace of mind.
At no time during the logistics process are the Dreamliner’s components out of the company’s control.
Reliance on air transport of aircraft components is a marked departure for Boeing, which has relied on cargo ships to carry parts of its other products, such as the 777.
While the Port of Charleston currently does not have a role in the 787 supply pipeline, Blattenbauer said the company’s positive experiences with seagoing shipping in the past makes the port the perfect logistical backup for its Dreamlifter system.
“Regardless of what additions we make to the supply chain pipeline in the future, I expect the Dreamlifter to soon become a fixture in the skies over Charleston,” Blattenbauer said. “This is the system we will use for the next 20 years.”
And the company believes it will have ample call to use the system long after its run of initial orders is delivered.
In a market outlook released in London on June 15 in advance of this year’s International Air Show at Le Bourget Airport outside of Paris, Boeing officials said, “Air travel is going to continue to grow, driven by economic growth, world trade, liberalization and by the availability of new, more capable and more efficient airplanes.”
On another promising note, for the first time in five years, none of the major air passenger carriers in the United States are under Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, a situation that should result in even more orders for the 787 Dreamliner in the next year, the company said.
Those words were music to the ears of members of the S.C. Department of Commerce delegation that traveled to the air show, held June 18 through 24, in hopes of inducing more aerospace contracting companies, especially those with ties to the 787 project, to locate facilities here.
The Boeing outlook calls for a market of 28,600 new commercial aircraft, both passenger and freighter, by 2026.
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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