21st Century Jet - Building the Boeing 777 - Full Episode 2

[Music] at the beginning of 1993 in a new Factory just north of Seattle an assembly line awaited the first components of the Boeing company's latest Airline the 777 it was a significant moment a culmination of 2 years work three strips of metal forming The front-wing Spar for the first plane were being riveted together by a huge computerized tool by the time this plane is completed there will be 3 million fasteners like this one holding together several hundred, parts 18 months from today the number one plane would have to fly but this schedule was all based on faith faith in a new approach to plane making that had taken an estimated billion dollarss to develop previous Boeing airliners had sometimes suffered from costly errors in the manufacturing process to minimize such problems Boeing was determined to improve Communications among the 10,000 people who were going to design and build the trip 7 the company would adopt a new management philosophy known by the slogan working together for the first time at Boeing This Plane would also be designed almost entirely by computer the inspiration for all this came from an unexpected Source the trip 7 team leader recalled the lessons learned from assembling his children's Christmas toys Fisher Price does the best job of any toy company on making toys that are easy to fabricate and assemble Fisher Price makes a little notch in their wheels so that you only can put the right wheel on the right Hub you only can put the left wheel on the left Hub you also use Simple tools so I started saying you know what we're after on this program is not just meet cost targets not meet just add value to our Airline customers but we're going to do that by doing what Fisher Price does on Christmas Eve we're going to make this easier fabricating assemble so one time as a as a present the engineering guys after we started to incorporate all the producibility they gave me a whole bunch of Fisher Price toys so I could to pass them out and make the points to the engineers the task facing the plane makers was enormous and the outcome was by no means certain pieces of this plane would be made all over the world in Britain and Italy Canada and other parts of North America Japan and Australia and there were two key questions would the pieces arrive on time and would they all fit together as planned this was a brand new plane made with new materials Guided by computerized electronic controls and powered by two of the biggest jet engines in commercial Aviation it would also have the largest Rudder in the business but it was this Rudder that would create the biggest Cliffhanger of the coming year the problem started during the design phase like all the components the rudder was designed by a group of Engineers called a design build team the team included designers and Manufacturing Engineers as well as representatives of the company that would make the rudder in Australia the working together concept was meant to highlight problems quickly and eliminate arguments as the problems were solved but legally for 777 legally tempers Rose when the rudder design was changed after the Australians had already begun making it excuse me what I'm saying is a process is defined right now and that's what we have to work to and but the process right says xray that's right we're not going to well I'm just telling you that you have to you you conform to the process as it's defined the room I'm I'm just telling you that's something you have to contend with and that's why you know not really even close in a computer analysis Boeing had discovered that the rudder might develop a Troublesome vibration under certain flight conditions you're looking at a 10 to 15% increase in Rudder stiffness or in the the total Loop stiffness to solve the problem I'm going to head down to Australia and face the uh teaming masses who aren't happy with [Music] this the teaming masses were the engineers and Executives at a small company in Melbourne called ASA ASA had won the contract to build the rudder initially they were delighted it's a L big job they were much less delighted when they got the news that the design was being changed after they were already under way on the Prototype the rudder consisted of many carbon fiber layers laid in a precise pattern and then baked in an oven much of their effort to date was now wasted put was cheese off the bles because of this chain and I'm not exactly that uh happy today because uh we set out to achieve a whole series of things with this particular Rudder skin uh we'll achieve most of them but probably the thing that worries me a little bit is that uh the configuration will change and it's going to change fairly dramatically and uh we still have to deliver on schedule uh we've got a reamp to deliver uh this Rudder in the middle of next year and uh if we're late on that it puts Bo in a bind and we don't want to do that if we can possibly avoid it in any large airliner the rudder plays an important part in controlling the sideways movement of the plane in the trip 7 powered by just two large engines the rudder had a particularly important job to perform on this particular airplane the key task is to allow us to keep the airplane flying in the right direction if we lose an engine on takeoff um it's with with a large twin engine airplane it's a a key part to to making the whole system work the problem was an unwanted vibration involving the rudder and the Piston that would move it called an actuator ASA was now behind schedule but the rudder was such a key part of the plane it had to be delivered on time or it would hold up the whole assembly and testing process the AA team met to discuss the situation what we really have to address is quite clearly the the effect of all these changes that have been brought on To Us by Boeing lovely company then they may be they've they've given us a real problem in so far as building this rud 2 schedule because um the changes effectively are the skin gets change by the addition of something between two four or six strips or PES of of um tape plus some additional fabric the actuator fittings in the actuator area uh become titanium and there is a a whole lot of extra Machining on some of the other ribs there were major concerns at Boeing over whether or not the rudder would be delivered on time any delay could throw the whole Plane off schedule as the newly appointed director of engineering R strai was worried it it it complicates schedule for certain because we wouldn't have anticipated having this problem this late in the game we wouldn't want it this late so like AA in Australia trying to produce the rudder if we have to reinforce it it affects them but these things crop up you know uh there's there will never be an airplane that's perfect right out of the shoot I mean it's too complex a vehicle to to ever expect that to happen and and changes occur and we we have to just recover from those as they as they happen we've had two um major redesign so far and and whilst this one looks good the previous one Solutions there look good uh hopefully this one's better and this solves the whole problem because after this I don't know what the hell we would do if there was another stuff up another design change or stuff up as Tyler put it was all too likely only time and further testing would tell in Boeing's own plant north of Seattle a giant machine was lumbering into action to assemble the first plane within a 30m radius Boeing had a number of plants that were making various components for the plane the components would then be shipped to the main plant for assembly this is one of the largest single pieces of the plane a carefully shaped aluminum wing panel stretching 100 ft across the factory floor the plan was that major sections of the plane starting with the wings were to be assembled from hundreds of smaller parts which would be milled and shaped in the various Boeing plants the larger sections would be transported from where they were built to the final assembly line between each of these stages the growing plane would be moved from one part of the assembly line to another by a series of enormous cranes in final assembly the last stage before the plane left the building the 777 would acquire its two huge engines but that was still 9 months away as the first Wing took shape individual pieces were being sealed so the interior of the wing could act as a fuel tank Glenda Barnes was one of the wing sealers the working together approach had definitely affected her job compared to the way things had worked in the past I'm a sealer and if there was a certain bracket such as this one that I knew as a sealer that did not need to have seal on it but the plans as of now set to seal it well before I would have to submit a request stating why then that would have to go from one place to the next and by then there's two or three airplanes that's out the door but this bracket is sealed now I can pull together with the other team and I wouldn't have to seal this bracket today that's how fast some things can happen now say after I have done my first two processes then I have to call Quality Control to come and look at my process and then they thoroughly go over it to make sure I have sealed in every place that I should still in and if I haven't they will tape it and let me know and if I have they will give me the okay to go ahead to the next process you know I get upset sometime if I miss something but we all have those bad days and those good days so and they are there to find those things that I may have missed Boeing calculated that their new methods had meant an 80% reduction in the sort of errors and changes they had experienced on previous planes the floor beams had come together with an accuracy that was down to the fourth decimal place they held the seat tracks which were made of aluminum except in the galley areas where a corrosion resistant titanium was used the reason it's more subject corrosion is spillage of Pop cocacola beer wine that type thing it's very corrosive to the to the aluminum Metals but not to Titanium you want to make sure that the seat is always held what's ever in the seat this is one of our I know it doesn't look like very much but it's a a very concentrated area for stress when the seats you know in a in a crash load or something like that it's very difficult and you have to make sure that you can survive a 16g crash in the past the designers in their offices would have designed a component and then washed their hands of it once the drawings had gone to the factory floor now they were involved throughout that's really interesting there we have some manufacturing engineers working with the mechanics now these guys are from the office building the engineers from over there and they're coming out talking to the mechanics something that you would never see in the past it is absolutely the only way of doing business before I couldn't find an engineer and now today I I have to ask him to leave so we can build they have to just quit designing so we can build the floor beams were made of carbon fiber composite very light and very strong a guiding principle in the design process was building a plane was as light as possible to minimize fuel consumption and reduce running costs wherever possible the team looked for lighter materials that could substitute for more conventional ones but in one case this got the trip 7 team into trouble the design of some parts of the plane called for using a new metal alloy called aluminum lithium aluminum lithium was to be used in a whole range of areas in the plane it was expensive but it was also much lighter and helped the plane meet its weight requirements but long after the decision had been made to go with the alloy they discovered a problem the new metal developed small cracks when it was drilled cracks are a very sensitive issue as you can imagine in in airplane design because we go to Great Lengths to not only not have cracks because cracks usually mean that the crack can propagate or get bigger plus we go to very U uh a lot of detail to make sure that if a crack does get started that we have ways of stopping the crack so it doesn't grow and it's just part of our normal design process the the issue we had with aluminum lithium was is that for the applications we were using it the cracks were okay technically but you can see the crack so how would the customers feel about that they could see the cracks now we'd have to say on these parts Mr Airline the cracks are okay and they would have to figure out how to communicate that to all the people that interface with the airplane it was time for a decision already the factory Was preparing to manufacture Parts with aluminum lithium a meeting was called of all the engineers involved before the meeting the Halls were buzzing with rumor and comment my cancellation cost like 2 million bucks for bun of the application and I think uh on the Lumin lithium meeting we all had both opinions in our in our minds at the same time it' sure be nice to just go ahead and get that weight in the bag and done it would sure be nice not to give the Airlines and ourselves an extra problem you got to be very careful not to make up your mind let all of the different sides of the issue get out in the open and then collectively use your strength to make the decision so the way we try to get the best decision is to get all the pieces out on the table see what's new current guidelines see what that means to us can we do something bad or not and then usually that thorough discussion leads you to the right direction you're going to have no you're going to have Parts here that sooner or later is going to be discovered major or primary structure components like section 12 rib stiffeners which the airlines for 30 years or 35 years whatever it is when they find a crack they figure they don't fly till it's fixed and it's a whole I don't I don't know how big the crack's going to be after they after 5 years or 10 years whatever it is but you have the potential here of developing multiable numbers of parts that are going to have minute cracks in into the airlines that's not an acceptable structural configuration for the airplane it's acceptable if Boeing says a success well you got a you got a basic material characteristic you know about already for example you know you can't use it in sheet you know you can't use it in plate you know you can't use it in some kind of extrusions two more just fell off for whatever reason you know the handwriting is on the wall it's just uh something that I think you need to listen the data is on the wall data maybe i' like to say a few words since Brian has had a chance to talk about this the fact is now is that uh for much technical point of view uh I would not put this back on the airplane if I had a choice because we we know more than we do now when we made the decision on the other hand I do remember that 280 lb is still an extremely valuable weight saving for this airplane and if we take uh take this 280 lbs out then I don't know where I'm going to get it uh we' worked extremely hard to save weight and we're going to continue to work hard to save weight and so it's it's a balance yeah I think uh everybody here is aware of the big issues I mean it's going to come down to cost and weight versus uh economic risk there economic risk and the worst thing is having to explain this to the airlines forever I think that's the problem with a preferred airplane but it's not black and white and right and if if we were 12,000 lb ago it' be a different situation than we are today yeah the decision to removed the aluminum lithium emerged almost by stealth as the group moved imperceptibly from discussing what would happen if they removed the alloy to planning how they would manage without it malali had achieved a genuinely unanimous decision we are tightly bound together nobody said this would be easy right creating Solutions and balancing of objectives the fact is it was a good decision there's no question about that uh again we thought of the customer uh which is what we ought to always think of uh decisions of this kind uh in this case the material uh exhibited certain properties that we didn't think were acceptable and uh it wasn't a safety issue at all but it was a quality perception relative to those imperfections and we decided until that material had those imperfections removed we just didn't feel it was appropriate to put them in the aircraft so we did the repercussions of the aluminum lithium decision were to rumble on for a long time with particular significance for the work being done in [Music] Japan a group of Boeing managers led by vice president Neil stal traveled to Japan to visit several companies that were making parts for the 777 the trip was a mixture of corporate relations making the Japanese feel appreciated and checking up on the parts that would soon be needed in Seattle if the plane was to stay on schedule it takes as you well know uh a lot of capacity both in people and in equipment to build an airplane so you want to spread that if you can across uh good foundation or good suppliers the other reason is for sale benefit like in dealing with Japan they buy a lot of our airplanes they're the biggest buyer of the 747 for example uh so we want to have a relationship with the Japanese the Japanese were manufacturing 20% of the parts for the Triple 7 some of these were supposed to have been made from aluminum lithium including key components of the wings called ins Spar ribs nippi the company making the ribs had scrambled to redesign their machine tools so that another metal could be used these trips turned Executives into 24-hour a day Workaholics business and noodles became hopelessly intertwined the group was thinking ahead to its visit to nippy just two days away I have the materials for nippy and my briefcase now when did nippy ship the inspire ribs on the 30th 30th they right in yes they have I saw I like that you can eat sushi with fingers too try it sometimes it tastes better I've ruined 26 neck ties and now she tells me I can eat with my fingers fingers [Laughter] yeah you you bring the bottom end up and then it doesn't slap around I see a slurping it's all watch Neil slurping want me to do it yeah I want you to do an extraordinary not all those you'll never wait a minute I bite them off Che no you're supposed to S them look at that now I know why you got to be a vice president couple more encourage you many people including some employees wondered why Boeing had involved the Japanese at all building large aircraft was one areaa of Technology the Japanese had not yet developed yet here was Boeing operating on what some people called an open kimono [Music] policy but for the trip 7 team this collaboration provided access to high quality heavy engineering and Equipment Kawasaki had constructed an entire Factory just to make parts for the Triple 7 fuselage and part of the purpose of standall's visit was to attend the opening ceremonies no such occasion could be allowed to pass without a Shinto religious [Music] Ceremony this was a significant event a priest might receive several thousand for a service like this in the hope hope that the gods would look favorably on the machinery and ensure that it ran smoothly in the years to [Music] come while stal looked out of place with his Japanese colleagues he had done his homework when it came to joining in [Applause] [Music] [Applause] good [Applause] job goodbye goodbye did you get your little Cedar box no I didn't I'm going to take this home for my wife for an Easter gift it with me we don't get a chance to go shopping so this is going to be your Easter gift somebody took my original one so I went and got another one the next stop was a visit to see how things were going on the passenger doors the new design methods had made it possible for all eight doors on the plane to have many parts in common which saved time and effort in the manufacturing process here with a for in their relations with the Japanese companies Boeing had to take careful note of the cultural differences between Japan and America as standal and his colleagues toured the various factories they sometimes found problems that had to be dealt with as tactfully as possible one of these became a wor uh about a month ago we discovered a problem brought it to their attention uh they told us what they were going to do to resolve it things weren't happening we met with them last week uh that was one of the reasons we came over early they showed us what they were doing and it was unacceptable we expressed our concerns to them told them what was wrong we had our people work with them on again off again during the week and we were not getting anywhere on resolving this so we asked for a meeting with the general manager and uh that meeting could have been very difficult and uh as it was we and I couldn't sleep because I was worried about it Mr Blakeley was worried about it neither one of us slept well and uh we went in the meeting had a good open discussion and so we were relieved but it could have been you know what next if we you know where do we go next if we we fail here so we were worried and I think that you know that speaks of the relationship we want to have with them uh if we were Whimsical and didn't care we would have gone to bed and gone to sleep but we care the following morning the group visited nippi in Yokohama while the bus was on its way to the plant the workers were already in the middle of their compulsory morning exercises surrounded by the tri 7 inpa ribs the company was [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] building standall's visit to nippy was partly to thank them for staying on schedule in spite of the changes in design and material he presented the company with a certificate of thanks from Boeing Senior [Applause] [Music] Management as standal and his colleagues left the factory and headed back to Seattle they had mixed feelings satisfaction at seeing how well the Japanese had learned how to build airplane Parts mingled perhaps with concern about how long it would take before the Japanese would be building airplanes on their own in Australia things were going badly with the rudder the much feared stuff up had happened Boeing had decided on a third major design change to compensate for the rudder vibration it was another major setback for ASA we've got a lot of major tools either completed or uh nearly there and we're probably this last change is probably going to affect at least 65% of our tooling program and we've got some 600 tools um anywhere from the large layup mandrels like you've seen to uh some of the big huge assembly jigs put the thing together and it changes a lot of it to soften the blow Mike votan from Boeing arrived to explain the changes in person it was a difficult job at best but it was made worse by the fact that Boeing's Engineers were still tinkering with the design as he was flying to Australia I think we need to have a telephone conversation with Seattle to find out between the time we left and the time we got down here if there's anything that's changed yeah we can the bad news is as you all know uh we don't have a lot of time left and uh I looked at the schedule last night when it got in and uh it tells me that we have about 5 months and 3 weeks to complete this Hardware which is a task that I would say under normal flow conditions would take about 18 months so we have we have quite a challenge ahead of us because the rear Spar as the Boeing people laid out the changes it became obvious to ASA that their worst fears had been realized I mean are you going to change that rib as well it looks like we worst case we hit this rib this rib and the riv bar that's the bad news that is bad news is now there is an attached plate up here but we didn't quite have the details worked out before I left when we all came back from the holidays and we thought we had a a nice smooth sailing program once again from the last change they told us for instance several of these parts weren't changing absolutely not and so we've rescheduled the program based around that particular assumption and now just today we find out that some of those major tools are changing the addition to this fifth hinge the changing to those rear Spar mandrels and whatnot um um it's a big impact it's going to be an interesting one to manage in the time frame we going to live with April the 5th sure you will I'm sure you will that's a month after we asked for you guys have to give me some you guys are just what happen is we're going to give you a Rudder if you're lucky Boeing had to keep the pressure on AA the delivery date for such a key part of the plane couldn't be allowed to slip since it would jeopardize the whole Tri 7 project but votan was clearly worried that AA would not be able to keep to the new and punishing schedule what what what do you say problem is uh there's a the magnitude of the workload is enormous and the opportunity for things to go wrong is great and uh that's why I say that I am maybe a little more pessimistic than than what you might hear from ASA Boeing has to have respect for a small company that's essentially I don't want to say bail them out necessarily but certainly help them out of a a bind I don't know as Boeing could uh get through one of these changes like this this late in they get in house on their own program schedule is based back in Seattle at the regular critical issues meeting as it was called the team was going over the Myriad problems that threaten the already tight schedule probably the single biggest item that that we're trying to do now is um number whatever it is 12 Panic early at each meeting the team analyzed the case histories of things that had gone wrong we looked at our payloads we looked at our systems now we're look at the structure and I think wolf made a a good point which will start to show up in these next two and that is you make make miss your first commitment and then things start to go wrong here's an example of a fuel jeterson system uh and uh find all the pieces here when they got around to do the installation uh you know somewhat late uh was a problem the this will not accept the the vent tube the issue there was that the engineers had a design and they'd actually ordered the parts to build it yeah it's really just a a tube that comes out of the outboard end of the trailing Edge and it enables the airplane to dump the fuel should it uh need to return to the airport when they came to um work the installation which involved other uh interfaces then uh they realized that uh the details and assemblies that they released prior to that time had in fact an interference problem they discovered at the assembly stage that a piece called a nutplate interfered with the Fasteners on the vent tube exactly the sort of thing the new design techniques were supposed to prevent what would it tell it what would it tell you to do or emphasize for the future I ideally you you'd model in all your Fasteners and nut plates ideally the second secondarily secondarily if you work to the schedule uh and not give up time that there is more time to recover here we've had a situation where we we we didn't get the installation done and and so that the surprise came later and now it's so late that we're out of sequence there's enough detail in the definition as the installation being built up that the engineer if he's really paying attention to it knows he's got a nutplate there maybe he's not modeling that nutplate but if he knows he's got close interferences between Parts he has to deal with it he has to deal with it or he doesn't have he needs to model it in that case so so our long-term hope is that every designer with his me counterpart gets it to the place where they have an integrated solution and only they can tell us that cuz they're the only ones that know those pieces know together yes we had to address that so that we know who's been there there's a clearing house at times I sit in meetings and even now we know they I get thinking from time to time boy back on the 767 or back on the 737 this is what I did and it worked and I want to I get impatient I want to pounce and uh yet with the style we have and the team that we have we are all in this together we support one another we don't pounce on another one another I can remember incidences on other programs where uh various functions would just be at each other the parts weren't here and the manufacturing guy need them where the design wasn't done so the planners could do and they'd be across the table at each other just talking very loud and I've seen that over many times in my career and when you sit and uh look at the style we use if he's got a problem that's my problem so let's go work it what you all think of Jerry's work how about his [Applause] [Music] team Midway in the year there was a meeting of the whole triple 1 the only place that 10,000 people could assemble was in the factory on the very spot where the first Triple 7 would roll out of the building in 9 months time the occasion was a reminder of how patriotism and plane making went hand in hand how are you Hi how are you good Mr President how you now will you please join me in welcoming 77 77 Division vice president general manager Alan so good morning to you [Applause] all this is the ninth all team meeting that we've had on the program and we've come a long way together it's been 21 months since we launched the 777 with our order from United Airlines that we only have eight months to go before roll out we are going to turn power on the airplane in January of next year with a first flight of June of next year so it's really coming together fast today we thought it would be really at about the same time as the all team meeting there was another milestone in the life of the first trip 7 a whole Wing was going to fly out of The Jig in which it had been assembled and across the factory floor it was 2 weeks later than planned but everyone hoped they could make up the time in the months ahead better see if they [Music] [Music] all before the wing could be lifted it had to be freed from a series Ser of fixtures on the tool one of which was proving difficult they're going to be a couple minutes aren't they in this high-tech Factory it was a hammer that finally did the trick we need to uh be careful that uh we don't hurt somebody's finger and pulling that out or or uh or damage the tool itself so we' want to be cautious as far as how we drive it out and uh right now we're using a a smaller Drive pin and it just readed that pop now she's done so that's good news are crescendos one after the other this just happens to be another one subsequent to that one in January where we loaded The Spar now the wing tomorrow we'll load the stub and the Keel beam so we're just it one right after the other now as far as the first airplane is concerned this is our last locator let's go on back over to our positions along the wing again now we need some people in the mid span here going up 42 okay this kth the top top [Music] Edge oh lovely [Music] [Applause] up [Music] w the first inch was the hardest from then on it was slowly and steadily upwards everything's went real smooth after we got it cleared from the tool a smooth pole smooth transition coming over both the cabs are working real well together uh there's virtually no movement the wing when they simultaneously move and that's a good thing to see we're almost done we're on the road home we see the light at the end of the tunnel better now looking good Don [Applause] Perfect all right all right good job you guys there it is first one first one while Wing number one was on its way down the assembly line more Wing components were headed for the factory to be assembled into planes farther down the line today at the Auburn Factory one of the long Wing panels emerges and emerges and emerges to be trucked to the assembly plant 60 Mi [Music] North there were huge logistical problems in getting pieces like this to the the factory just at the right time not too soon so they took up storage space nor too late so they held up the [Music] process like a dinosaur with a second brain in its tail this 130 ft long truck needed a driver at each [Music] end there was also a third driver in a van behind to prevent nasty [Music] accidents I'll pick you up after him as uh uh accidents on the road involving other vehicles and stuff we've never had so that's pretty impressive right there we've had a couple incidences with just stop signs and stuff but other than that nothing at least the left it a little bit so we more visibility CLE up okay Bill you got a white one there in the left lane okay see keep [Music] ey oh yeah we've had people Dynamite their brakes in front of of us so we had to go around them real fast we had a Porsche it was going to go underneath of us one time then we had a motorcycle decided he was going to try it one time but they quit real [Music] quick Boeing has other plants across the country a big plant in witch Kansas made several key parts for Boeing planes that were shipped by rail across the the Great Planes to Seattle it was never a trip without hazards one of the problems we've had in the past is on our 737 aircraft that we do not cover we do not cover the rail car we've had rifle shots we've even had an arrow stuck in the side of the fuselage when it was received and rent we've done things a little different on the 777 where we actually cover the rail car uh so we hope to prevent some of that although a rifle shot would still go through probably that covering but there wouldn't be the extent of the ad damage that we've had on the other aircraft more and more parts were being assembled into bigger and bigger pieces as the major sections of the plane began to take shape the pieces were held together with rivets Fasteners that would hold them to the ribs and cords that gave the plane strength this was the largest automated riveting machine in the world it was controlled by computers but autom riveting wouldn't work for parts that were too curved or awkwardly shaped these would be done by hand the best things about this job are uh I'm compensated very well really and uh the atmosphere overall is fairly relaxed I don't feel really stressed or really pushed and that's real important uh in any workplace the worst parts of it are probably that at times it does get tedious it does get repetitious and uh it's uh gets a little noisy in here the environment isn't always real Pleasant gets a little warm sometimes that's probably the worst end of it there are some mechanics that don't like to work on the exterior skin of the airplane because uh it's easy to destroy thousands of dollars worth of material in a very short time if you're not careful and some of them just don't like probably take the responsibility of maybe doing that before complete pieces of the plane left the factory they underwent an important procedure called an foe check Foe for foreign object elimination Boeing wanted to avoid having a customer find anything rattling around in the plane after delivery a second set of initials fod refers to foreign object damage it wasn't a complicated procedure you tipped a piece on end banged on its sides and hoped any loose objects fell out one did We Know by analyzing it that the bolt came out of our major assembly area that uh in their fod check they missed it the pins are probably out of our secondary uh forward box structure area U that information will be fed back to the mechanics who run the process uh in those control codes in those assembly areas on the other side of the Pacific in Australia the progress of the rudder had reached a more hopeful stage in spite of all the design changes the rudder for the first plane had been completed on time and was about to be shipped to Seattle but there were still one or two tiny problems like rounding up some missing Fasteners we're now down to six three are on their way on an airplane and three are probably at this stage being put on an airplane to get here in time so that we can uh fasten them up on Boeing wanted to get their hands on the rudder as soon as possible they arranged to fly at the Seattle on a 747 freighter Mike vand of Boeing was in Melbourne to keep up the pressure well we wanted to uh one just come out and congratulate AA for tremendous job they've done um two uh we have some some issues that we have to clean up this week money and uh oh a variety of contractual issues and uh and we also want to see the hardware ship out the door we've been involved in this now for 3 years and uh this is kind of the culmination a lot of effort by a lot of people and uh we'd like to see uh the end of it right we had to design a special shipping container for it we had to we went out actually went out to the airport and uh measure the the door and we have to can the rudder at a 45° angle and support it in a special way and you know push it into the airplane and uh and uh then then we bring it into Los Angeles and we have to put it on a truck and truck it up to Seattle on a on an air ride trailer just when it seemed to be going smoothly there was a final snag the rudder in its box bashed a small hole in the ceiling of the [Music] freighter [Music] another first for the tri trip 7 began one Sunday morning at 6:18 a.m. the first two Wings would be lifted into position side by side and attached to the central piece of the [Music] fuselage it would be a crucial test for the new computer controlled crane system built especially for the job there was an air of uncertainty about the center of gravity of the Wings since they had acquired a lot of extra weight over the previous months we put some extremely heavy components on this Wing we've hung the Nel strut we've got the the AP diagonal brace installed we've uh put an awful lot of systems not only on the trailing Edge and on the Leading Edge where you can see it but we have folks that work every day inside the wings putting components inside the wings we've got a lot of uh fuel filters we've got fuel probes we've got hydraulic systems we got fuel tubing we' got electrical wire runs uh inside the wings where where you can't see the things that have been added on so that changes the the weight and the balance of the wing from the time that it moved from the seal test and paint area and then we pick it up with all of these added components and it changes the the center of gravity no one had ever lifted this much weight with these cranes bugs in the computer software began to cause small imbalances in the tension on the four hooks which then caused the crane itself to cut out bags of lead shot were used to even out the tension temporarily but more work would have to be done on the softwear as soon as possible okay is everybody happy you L yourself up line yourself up East yeah in East [Music] here [Music] okay we're going to hold this for a few minutes while they wipe all their ball sockets once the wings were in position they were bolted firmly to the fuselage then a final quality control check for tightness near the end of the year the trip 7 team met to celebrate a symbolic Milestone it was the 777th day of work on the new plane the team permitted themselves three quiet cheers as they looked ahead to what the new year would [Music] bring thank you as the first year of manufactur Drew to a close the triple 1 breathed the sigh of relief at the progress they' made but what they had done so far would later seem simple compared with the upcoming task of installing and testing a whole new range of hydraulic and electronic systems and then would come the testing of the two huge engines that would have to lift the plane off the ground time was of the essence for now that first flight was just 6 months [Music] away [Music]

Channel: shareoldvideos

Views: 249,803

Keywords: Boeing 777

Id: 5inPWgrjONc

Length: 54min 28sec (3268 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 03 2013