The Boeing Interiors business is divided into 5 major product streams to support the interior production of an airplane. 777x was a new derivative airplane program driving new engineering in development within each of the 5 product streams. With each new product, a new or revised production system was required.
To support the initial business case, Industrial Engineering helped develop high level program rate planning to determine feasibility of producing the new program within an existing production environment. It was determined that available facility capacity would accommodate estimated future statement of work, but product work streams would need to be reconfigured and expanded to support new program engineering and increased demand. I was assigned as a project manager to lead production readiness effort for 1 major product stream.
New production system design was created iteratively to capture product engineering release schedule and satisfy business objectives. Working cross-functionally, I first measured the existing system’s ability to support new engineering and then began to establish future system design requirements where gaps were highlighted — space usage, tooling definition, engineering specs, build constraints, flow, etc.
Planning was approved to support funding a new production system.
During execution, I collaborated with engineering and operations to monitor scope, schedule, earned value, risk, and change control.
Issue 1: Internal tool supplier’s delivery schedule did not support production system testing schedule
Resolution: Product testing to be built out of sequence to support tool availability. Change to schedule captured in change control then implemented on baseline schedule.
Issue 2: Product engineering definition driving revised system design
Resolution: Analyzed risk and proposed changes to scope, schedule, and cost. After approval in change board, worked with suppliers on changes to design. Followed communication plan to properly communicate changes to operations and executive leadership.
Project was closed when system successfully supported fit, form, and function of new product engineering. System responsibility was delivered to operations.