Use of Modeling and Simulation in the Design of the Boeing 777 Essay - 8

Use of Modeling and Simulation in the Design of the Boeing 777 - Essay Example The Boeing 777 is one of the most successful commercial airplanes made in the industry. The design process started in 1990 and the first plane was delivered in 1995, a remarkably short design period for a complex engineering product such as an airplane. Though the plane was initially designed for a production run of 300 planes, as of August 2013, over 1100 of these wide-body airlines had been delivered. Airlines continue to order these planes 17 years after the first production and the current production rate is 100 a year (Tinseth, Randy, 2013). The aircraft has also had an unblemished safety record and even the crash of the Asiana Airlines plane at San Francisco airport in July 2013 has been attributed to pilot error. The aircraft industry design process has been described as â€Å"design- mockup- rework-prototype-test-revise-produce-test-revise-produce-test† cycle (Snyder, Charles, R., et al, 1998, p34). Boeing 777 design process was dramatically different from earlier practice in the airline industry. Wolf L. Glende, the Chief Engineer – Systems of the Boeing 777 programme says that the plane was conceived as a model urgently needed to fill the gap between the 747 and the 767. The design target was a plane that could carry 300 and 500 passengers over distances up to 7500 nautical miles at a cruise speed of 0.84 much. The Boeing 777 was the first commercial airplane designed with active participation from its customers. Boeing worked with eight major airlines from the US, Europe and South East Asia to configure the plane they preferred (Glende, Wolf, L., p 5-2). One key objective was to reduce by at least 50% the change, error and rework that is typical of large engineering system design projects. These objectives were achieved by adoption of certain core processes discussed below (Glende, Wolf, L., p 5-3). Design of a large airplane involves large teams, employed by different organizations and at various locations. Design activities tend to be done in series with results â€Å"thrown over the fence† with incomplete communication. The job specialization of each time makes for incomplete understanding and inter-organization rivalry. For the 777, Boeing created multi-functional Design/Build Teams (DBT) for each major subsystem of the airplane such as Structures, Avionics, Mechanical/Hydraulics, Propulsion and Payload.