Boeing on the Future of Aerospace Fasteners

January 10

00:00 2011

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1/10/2011
FEATURE

The Boeing Company executive in charge of the 635 million fasteners the airplane maker is projected to use in 2012 sat down for a one-on-one interview with FIN.

The full story is now available to GlobalFastenerNews.com subscribers.

A second story summarizes the William Davidson Institute study – “Boeing, The Fight for Fasteners” – of the aerospace fastener shortages.

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Here are highlights from the FIN interview with John Byrne, director of common commodities supplier management / commercial airplanes

• Fastener manufacturers need to adopt lean principles to increase profits from aerospace fasteners. Boeing has increased 737 production from 28 planes a month to 31.5 using lean techniques and anticipates reaching 38 per month by 2013.

• The multiple engineering requirements for aerospace fasteners “tend to place constraints on how wide a supplier base you can have.” A staff of 30 conducts a “rigorous qualifying process, which reduces the number of suppliers.”

• Boeing has worked hard to meet the Buy American requirements of the Berry Amendment.

Almost all the fastener suppliers are based in North America. “Fasteners are not a commodity for us to go to India or China for,” but there are situations for Boeing to look at offshore production.

• Fasteners in Boeing planes will continue to evolve. Strength and weight are key issues.” The whole nature of fastening solutions has changed with a composite plane.”

• Fastener supply is among the reasons for delays of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. “We are going to manage fasteners more aggressively.”

• Beyond supply lessons, Boeing discovered the new fasteners brought other challenges. “What we learned is that the installation (of new fastening systems) was more difficult – especially to remove and replace fasteners.”

• “Very few people appreciate the amount of engineering in fastening solutions. There are a lot of people who think just ‘nuts and bolts’.” The engineering of tolerances is actually “pretty amazing engineering.”

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