Japanese Helping 787 Take Wing
Since the dawn of the Jet Age, designers have built aircraft chiefly from sheets of aluminum. Now Boeing Co. is betting its future by designing a plane primarily around thin layers of carbon fibers to dramatically cut weight and to save fuel costs.
These composite materials are the key to Boeing’s lofty plans for its 787 Dreamliner jet. If the design works as planned, analysts say, composites will revolutionize aircraft as dramatically as the industry’s shift from wood to metal 80 years ago.
Many responsible for crucial aspects of the 787’s design and production, though, aren’t Boeing staffers. Instead, the company has farmed out these jobs to its global partners, such as Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, to share the project’s immense financial risk. Some critics complain that Boeing is giving away its technical advantage through this arrangement, but the aerospace giant said it had little choice but to seek partnerships given the high cost of global competition.
So, for the last two years, Toyohiro Nagase has quietly led a SWAT team of more than 100 Mitsubishi engineers at Boeing’s famed aircraft design center here to fashion the blueprint for the 787’s wing. “It’s very challenging. It’s something we have never done before” in aviation design, Nagase said.
The 250-seat craft is not slated to fly until 2008, but it’s already revived Boeing’s reputation and stolen momentum from European rival Airbus. Boeing touts the 787 as the world’s most fuel-efficient plane, and with jet fuel prices soaring, 19 airlines have ordered 237 of the new craft in the last year.
Two years ago Airbus surpassed Boeing as the world’s largest commercial plane maker, but orders for Airbus’ new A380 jumbo jet are disappointing. Scott Carson, Boeing’s new top aircraft salesman, has vowed to reclaim the No. 1 title, thanks in part to the 787. “We’ll beat them this year,” he said.
The 787 is also a big reason investors have driven up Boeing’s stock 44% in the last year. The shares hit a 52-week high of $61.25 on Friday, before closing at $61.01, up $1.27, on the New York Stock Exchange.
Soaring fuel costs are crimping a rebound in the airline business, and the gas-stingy 787 is seen as one possible solution. Last year airlines spent $63 billion on fuel, up 43% from 2003, and fuel costs are likely to jump 21% in 2005, according to the International Air Transport Assn.
“This is an investment in our future,” said Douglas Steenland, president of Northwest Airlines Corp., which ordered 18 Boeing 787 jets Friday.
Much of the 787’s cost savings will come from trimming 10,000 pounds in weight, though the overall plane size is about the same as that of a Boeing 767. That’s because about half of the 787 will be built from composite materials. Boeing promises that the new plane will save airlines 20% a year in fuel costs and 10% in total operating expenses. A 767 typically uses 20,000 gallons of fuel during a long-haul international flight; a 787 would consume about 4,000 gallons less, saving nearly $8,000 a trip at the current wholesale price.
But getting the 787 airborne will require a major overhaul in design and production techniques.
For decades, airplane wings have been assembled much like the walls of a house. A wing consists chiefly of aluminum sheets that are fastened to aluminum spars with rivets. On the Airbus A380, the wings will have more than 1 million rivets.
But there will be few rivets on the 787’s wings. Instead, the wing will be created in 80-foot-long sections. Thin sheets of carbon-fiber fabric will be laid out in a mold, soaked with an epoxy and then baked in an industrial oven. The wing can’t have any air pockets -- that could cause cracking -- so it will be wrapped in a massive plastic bag, with air drawn out by an industrial vacuum machine.
Composite wings have rarely been used before -- usually only in 10-foot-long sections on fighter jets, and certainly never on the scale required in the 787.
The responsibility for pulling off this complex wing project falls to Nagase, whose title is Mitsubishi’s Seattle On-Site Team Leader.
He first worked with Boeing in the late 1970s on the 767 when Mitsubishi was given a contract to make a small section of the fuselage. A decade later, he was named leader of a group that spent a year in the U.S. learning from Boeing engineers how to make part of the fuselage for the 777.
“Working with Boeing is nothing new to me,” said Nagase, 52. He’s spent about one-quarter of his career with Boeing in Seattle. “Our responsibilities have been growing, and this is the first time they’ve asked us to do the wing box.”
In all, three major Japanese industrial conglomerates -- Mitsubishi, Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. and Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. -- will design and build 35% of the 787, up sharply from the 6% contribution by Japanese companies to Boeing’s 747 jumbo jet three decades ago.
These sorts of joint partnerships have been a trend in the commercial plane industry for years. Parts for the Airbus A380 are made in 30 countries, including the U.S. “People would love to do everything inside, but that’s not practical anymore,” said Mike Bair, Boeing’s 787 program manager.
As a result, there is an international flavor on the 787 team. More than 1,000 engineers from foreign suppliers have taken up desks and cubicles alongside Boeing designers. “It feels like the United Nations in here,” said Courtney Makela Jr., Boeing’s engineering integration leader on the 787.
These partners must also share the financial risks. The three Japanese conglomerates will spend nearly $2 billion on the 787, analysts estimate. The Japanese companies hope to secure low-interest government loans to help defray their costs, but Mitsubishi has been tangled up in an international trade dispute between Boeing and Airbus over government subsidies and so far has had to pick up the bill on its own.
Key design work is done in a vast room with a wall-size video screen and clocks that tell the time in six countries. At 4 p.m. local time -- or 9 a.m. in Japan -- a group of Boeing and Mitsubishi engineers sit before the large screen and go over wing details with their counterparts in Japan. One part of the screen shows those on the other side of the Pacific speaking to their colleagues live, while another image shows a three-dimensional view of a wing section
This allows for a 24-hour work cycle, so that engineers in Japan can pick up on work that has been left by U.S.-based workers, and vice versa. “It has cut development time significantly,” said Mark Jenks, program manager for the 787 wing.
The principal design work on the wing should be done by the end of summer, Nagase said. He will then return to Japan to oversee the manufacturing.
Last month Mitsubishi broke ground on a $400-million, 500,000-square-foot factory in Japan to produce wings for the 787. Kawasaki also began construction of a factory to build 787 fuselage sections.
All the wiring and innards of the wing will be completed in Japan before being flown in a modified 747 to Everett, a suburb of Seattle. Here, the composite wing will be snapped to the fuselage. About 2,000 Boeing technicians will need only three days to do final assembly of the 787, compared with 21 days for a 767.
Aerospace ambitions are nothing new in Japan. Before World War II the aerospace industry thrived in Asia and many of the best planes in the war were built by Japan, including the Mitsubishi Zero fighter. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, the U.S. dismantled Japan’s aerospace industry and allowed it to start again seven years later.
In recent decades, Japan has steadily increased its aviation base and is now host to one of the largest aerospace centers. “It’s amazing to me how little attention it has gotten,” said Richard J. Samuels, a Japan expert and director of the Center for International Studies at MIT.
In the U.S., Mitsubishi parent Mitsubishi Group is best known for automobiles. But the vast enterprise is one of the world’s largest conglomerates, with interests in shipbuilding, nuclear power plants, rockets and banking.
And completing the 787 would bring Japan one step closer to achieving a long-standing goal. “To build a national aircraft is something that has long been a dream of Japan’s heavy industry,” Samuels said.
Last month Mitsubishi notified the Japanese government that it would draw up plans for a commercial jet that could seat as many as 90 passengers. The plane would compete with jets built by Brazil’s Embraer and Canada’s Bombardier Inc., both of which make aircraft used by commuter airlines and budget carriers.
And one key component of the new Mitsubishi plane: a design using lightweight composites that would offer better fuel economy.
