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Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Process and system variation impacts on 777 wings manufacturing

Abstract

dc:description.abstract

The Boeing 777 has seen an increased the rate of production from one plane every 7 days to one plane every 2.5 days. Wing production has relied on a sizeable work force and the use of overtime to meet this demand. The primary objective is to improve build efficiency by reducing variability in the production system. The impact of eleven variables was determined using a stepwise regression to predict for total labor hours across 250 airplanes. Three variables - travelers, defects, and quality assurance response time - accounted for almost 50% of the variability in labor hours. Other variations included engineering changes and rate breaks. Moving forward, the Wing Majors shop will redirect resources to control travelers, improve quality, and minimize quality assurance delays.

Degree

thesis:*
Department dc:contributor.department
Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT
Grantor dc:publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Year dc:date.issued
2015

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Mangan, Esther Hu
Advisor dc:contributor.advisor
  • Thomas Roemer and Daniel Whitney.

Subjects

dc:subject × 3

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Language dc:language.iso
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Handle dc:identifier.uri
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100107
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/100107

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
MIT
Base URL
dspace.mit.edu/oai/request
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Mangan, Esther Hu. Process and system variation impacts on 777 wings manufacturing. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/100107