787 production slow down

News out of Charleston, SC that Vought will temporarily stop producing the rear fuselage barrels for the 787 is the first indication that the bottleneck at Everett may not improve for a few months. An article in Charleston's Post and Courier News quotes Elmer Doty as saying that they do plan on resuming production of the rear fuselages later this year. It looks like Vought's line is as full as it can be especially since they're shipping only one complete rear fuselage section each month. Additionally, Spirit is also slowing its production of 787 forward fuselages.

The production issues and the travelled work all contributed to a bottleneck at Boeing's Everett's plant where scaffolding has to be put up around the air frames that have delivered thus far in order to finish all the travelled work. That as well as other issues has hindered Boeing from pulling out even one shop complete 787.

While the rest of the supply chain seems to be recovering, Boeing is still dealing with the issues left behind from the earlier issues thus the suppliers will have to slow down their production though it does seem that Global Aeronautica does have room and doesn't need to slow down their production of main fuselages.

This production slow down will allow Boeing to catch up with the rest of the supply chain as well as allow the tier one suppliers to ensure that all their respective work packages are appropraitely stuffed when shipped to Everett. However it will probably allow them to deliver only the 25 787 as they've indicated unless there is a significant improvement in the production rate (which would be necessitated by a steep learning curve on the 787 line). Once Boeing's 787 manufacturing technicians are fully up to speed on working on the 787 final assembly line as Boeing has intended (without any travelled work or any other engineering issues) then production can be ramped up to the 10/month or more.