Boeing goes bionic to roll out more Dreamliners

BUSINESS NEWS FEBRUARY 1, 2019 / 9:31 AM / UPDATED 24 MINUTES AGO

Eric M. Johnson, Tim Hepher

The world’s largest planemaker is equipping mechanics with exoskeletons, similar to ones that allow cameramen to quickly navigate the sidelines of NFL football games, to increase their strength and speed. The high-tech suits also help reduce fatigue on repetitive tasks, such as overhead drilling.

“You have the capability of a robot and the capability of a human being melded together,” Christopher Reid, a Boeing associate technical fellow who previously designed NASA spacesuits, told Reuters during a factory tour.

The new technology is an example a broader shift in the industry’s focus towards production, as planemakers face the task of making good on a record order boom. After a decade in which Boeing and Airbus generated massive orders fueled by the rise of China and emerging markets, the main battleground is shifting towards production strategy rather than market share.

At twin Dreamliner factories in South Carolina and Washington state, Boeing also plans to soon deploy Bluetooth-enabled ‘smart’ wrenches that signal if machinists apply the correct torque to a nut, and has introduced new self-driving work platforms to shave time off aircraft assembly, according to people familiar with the technologies.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-787-dreamliner/boeing-goes-bionic-to-roll-out-more-dreamliners-idUSKCN1PQ4X7-

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“Don’t inspect things twice,” Mark Stockton, engineering director for Boeing South Carolina, told Reuters during the factory tour. “Inspect things once and validate things once.”

Boeing said it did not expect that these changes in inspections will result in the loss of jobs.

But a union official asked about the strategy warned it carries risks such as higher injury rates, or potentially delayed aircraft deliveries, if last-minute problems are discovered.

“Removing thousands of inspections per airplane will negatively impact the manufacturing process and push defects down line,” IAM 751 spokeswoman Connie Kelliher said by email.


Hey Stockton, as former aircraft inspector, I got a question for you....................your mantra is inspect once and validate once right..............................how quait, have "you" ever physically inspected the turbine blades in a engine once and validate once.........................