EVERETT, Wash. - Boeing said Tuesday there will be a break in work on the 787 Dreamliner assembly line.
Call it a bump in the road but, beginning immediately, Boeing will hold off from taking delivery and loading major parts into the giant assembly tool at the north end of the the 787 assembly line. Boeing is calling this an adjustment that won't affect deliveries that are expected to begin with certification by the FAA later this year.
The break will last more than a month, slowing work on the next two airplanes scheduled for assembly, aircrafts No. 23 and 24. Dreamliner No. 22 was just loaded into the assembly tool over the weekend.
Boeing says the time-out is to allow some suppliers to catch up in delivering parts and incorporate engineering changes. While Boeing is not specific about which parts are behind in delivery, the company says they are not major sub-assemblies, such as wings or bodies, or major components, such as the landing gear.
Boeing says after the break, the assembly line should smoothly return to a normal schedule starting with airplane No. 25.
In a memo to employees, 787 chief Scott Fancher says, "This is not a production shutdown. In fact, we have plenty to do here in Everett to complete work on the airplanes we currently have in flow."
In other words, there's no need to layoff anyone.
"We need to remember that we have made great progress in stabilizing the supply chain and improving our efficiencies in Final Assembly," Fancher adds. "Parts shortages and other production challenges are not unusual and happen occasionally on every airplane program."
What Boeing is trying to avoid is doing any work out of sequence. Going back in installing parts on a nearly finished airplane is both time consuming and very expensive. It's this out of sequence work that's blamed for much of the real delays that affected the earlier years of the Dreamliner program, which knocked the program off schedule by about two years.
Production of the sub-assemblies of airplane No. 23 and 24 will continue at Boeing's world wide group of suppliers. And when things are caught up, those parts will start coming together inside the factory and become real airplanes.
The adjustment doesn't affect ongoing flight testing for certification.
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