Author Archives: AccountMate

The Challenge of Fixing a Boeing 787

Posted on by

AUGUST 6, 2013

ethiopian airDesigning a new product such as the Boeing 787 is a huge undertaking. The thin plastic skin on the 787 Dreamliner, writes The New York Times (July 30, 2013),  ”is an engineering marvel, a mix of carbon fibers and epoxy molded into large barrel-shaped sections that are then baked at up to 350 degrees in giant ovens.” But while airlines love how this lightweight concoction saves fuel, the recent fire on a Ethiopian Air 787 in London provides the first test of how much more difficult and costly it will be to repair serious damage than on older aluminum planes.  Each day a jet remains grounded costs an airline tens of thousands of dollars.

The cause of the fire, a pinched wire on an emergency transmitter, was fairly mundane. But the high temperatures weakened the supports in a 10-foot stretch at the top of the rear fuselage and seared the paint on the top of the skin, causing the most extensive damage yet to one of the new 787s. Boeing will have to cut out the damaged areas and bolt a large patch, made of overlapping panels of composite materials, onto the plane. It will also need to install new composite supports and shore up the structural integrity of the plane. If the damage were more extreme, Boeing could remove the entire 23-foot-long barrel containing most of the jet’s rear fuselage and snap in another one.

The use of composite materials on planes has grown steadily over the last 4 decades. Only 1% of the weight of Boeing’s 747 jumbo jet came from composite parts when it was introduced in 1969. That increased to 11% by 1995 on the 777, which has an all-composite tail section. Composites now account for half of the 787’s weight, which, together with more efficient engines, cut fuel consumption by 20%.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

When Detroit Was a Cluster

Posted on by

AUGUST 4, 2013

VW's plant in Chattanooga TN

VW’s plant in Chattanooga TN

Clustering is an interesting topic. In Orlando, over 70,000 people are employed in the theme park cluster that includes Disney, Universal, Legoland, Sea World, Gatorland, and more. This week, Universal Studios announced record profits after sinking a quarter billion dollars into the Harry Potter exhibit–and is adding yet another 1,800 room hotel to its site.The Wall Street Journal (July 31, 2013) adds to the discussion with an article titled “Detroit Was a Cluster”.

“Clusters,” writes The Journal, ”offer powerful advantages such as labor market pooling. But these potent synergies can be lost when special technological competence becomes outmoded.” With lean manufacturing, clustering has become more important in the auto industry, with suppliers required to be between one hour and one day’s drive of factories. A new cluster has formed, known as the “auto corridor” between I-75 and I-65, which still includes the upper Midwest but has pulled the industry’s center of gravity steadily south.

The reason is well known: The Japanese, Germans and Koreans located their plants in the South to avoid the United Auto Workers. Honda was the bellwether when in 1980 it picked Marysville, Ohio for its first plant. Honda was expected to be required to employ the UAW, but picked a site in rural Ohio with little union presence. The firm soon concluded that its production system would be impossible with union workers, and that a UAW workforce could be avoided without undue political consequence.

Even a decade ago, more than half of all auto production jobs were still in Ohio, Indiana and Michigan. Now it’s below 44%. Kentucky alone today claims 440 auto manufacturing-related businesses! The transplants made little secret of their motivation in passing up the substantial benefits of the then-cluster around Detroit. Every Toyota factory in the U.S. is non-union and all but one is in the South. Ditto Nissan, Mercedes, Hyundai, BMW and Kia.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.

Inside Tesla’s Robotic Factory

Posted on by

July 25, 2013

teslaWired Magazine (July 16, 2013) provides a tour of the 5 million-square-foot Tesla Motors factory in Fremont, California to see how CEO Elon Musk is rethinking how cars are built.  Tesla Motors has kicked off production of the gorgeous Model S into overdrive, cranking out some 400 cars a week on one of the world’s most advanced automotive production lines.

A major automaker in Detroit or Japan can churn out 400 cars a day, and in fact the Tesla Motors plant had a capacity of 6,000 cars a week when Toyota and General Motors ran this factory in the 1980s and 1990s. But Tesla’s numbers are impressive when you consider the Silicon Valley automaker started less than a decade ago with a few engineers and mechanics shoving piecemeal components into a rolling chassis made by Lotus.

Tesla got the factory for a song from Toyota in 2010, spent about a year or so setting up tooling and started producing the Model S sedan in mid-2012. The automaker brings in raw materials by the truckload, including the massive rolls of aluminum we see in the 5 minute video that are bent, pressed, and formed to create the car. Those lightweight components are assembled by swarm of 160 red robots.

The bare body is shipped off for prepping and paint before joining the assembly line under the power of autonomous robots. The shell is ushered through the line as Tesla’s 3,000 workers work alongside their robotic counterparts to install the battery, motor, interior, and miles of cabling and components that help create the electric sports sedan.

This post provided courtesy of Jay and Barry’s OM Blog at www.heizerrenderom.wordpress.com. Professors Jay Heizer and Barry Render are authors of Operations Management , the world’s top selling textbook in its field, published by Pearson.