Analysis of Boeing Manufacturing Case

Boeing adopted the radical change approach for designing and developing the 787 Dreamliner because they were in competition with Airbus and needed a new approach in which they could use innovation to stand out upon their competitiors. Boeing was looking to reduce manufacturing costs and development times. Boeing took an aggressive approach to apply their techniques. There was not enough time to fully establish the project or to even communicate with vendors. The project was delayed mainly because of their global supply chain network.

Boeing did not have the necessary technology to fulfill the needs of the 787 Dreamliner which unfortunately caused it to have many delays and problems. In my opinion, this was not a very good decision. It was a financial burden to the company and caused unnecessary stress on the company as a whole. They were left with no choice but to make up for the losses to airlines that purchased the 787 Dreamliner.

When analyzing the Dreamliner program using the silo perspective, we can see that the program had difficulty communicating between Boeing and its vendors.

However, the silo perspective was good for individual departments within the company. It increased efficiency within these departments, but created processes of supply chains to become incompatible.

The plan at Boeing was to use various suppliers in which would each have expertise over the different parts of the plane to quicken the process, when it reality it delayed it extremely. When looking at the business persceptive, Boeing needed IS to monitor the connection with their vendors, resolving problems in a shorter time frame.

The design of the integrated supply chain lacked a control system that was able to monitor the designing, planning, and manufacturing, as well as the suppliers. There was too many vendors in the supply chain, which ultimately caused it to fail. To integrate the supply chain better, Boeing needed to have a full understanding of supply chain management and monitor it closely using IS. Supply chain management is the flow of goods. Boeing could have been tracking the movement and storage of the parts of the planes.

They also could have been tracking what their vendors were doing and when by having them record down specific times and dates that they were working on the parts. Lastly, they would have been able to keep track of the overall time it took to make each part. With this information they could have been able to find more efficient ways to build the parts. All of these would be done through IS and would have caused the Dreamliner from failing.

If I were the program manager, I would have looked to establish a manufacturing factory that focused solely on production of the parts for the plane. This way, more attention would be paid to the specific parts and communication between the vendors would have been more effective. This factory would need employees which would be skilled in their specific function and that would be able to produce the parts in a timely and efficient way. Enforcing more guidelines will ensure that the vendors are able to get their jobs done. It is also important to plan for the future, because the Dreamliner held high expectations it was in high demand. Boeing should have predicted an increase in orders and better prepared themselves for what was about to come their way. An IS would have helped to track data that would have been useful in determining the projection of the Dreamliner.