Dear J-
Boeing is running into issues with their Dreamliner — the 787 — where because of delayed rollout, test flight, schedule slip, they’re starting to lose some of their initial orders. The philosophy is interesting: how do you improve per-passenger efficiency and costs? Boeing chose weight reduction and limited passengers, which helps range, but requires more flights to serve the same number of compared to the super-jumbo 747 or Airbus A380.
Back to schedule, though; business is filled with experts and prognosticators plying their trade as seers; some surely thought that Boeing’s schedule was overly ambitious. There is no doubt that engineering these huge machines is complex and fraught with risk; the better-planned the schedule, ultimately, the more flexibility you’ll have to execute it. The 787 is, I think, partially hoist on marketing’s petard; well-timed announcements can disrupt your competitors’ products (see also: vaporware) as long as you’re able to back up your claims.
Me, I’ve been trying to write down in the last ten minutes of work all the things I didn’t get done so that I could attack them with a fresh mind in the morning. The list has grown unfortunately long, but since I mostly announce them to myself (yesterday I made the mistake of promising tomorrow rashly), the only fear, uncertainty, and doubt is generated in my mind.
Mike
Tags: boeing 787, competition, lies, lists, to-do
Dear J- 
22 July 2009 at 7:24 pm |
Oh, end of day list – or Captain Bringdown, as you are more widely known – is there any optimism you cannot kill? Any sense of achievement you cannot blunt with your terrible reality?
From time to time, I try to make such a list at the end of my work day. I have sat for half an hour on some occasions, still writing, and getting madder and madder at myself for making lists of problems instead of solutions. Argh.
23 July 2009 at 8:29 pm |
I finally checked my voice mail today, after a week of ignoring the little red light. The damage was less than I expected, seventeen messages, although there was a decided trend (last Thursday’s messages accounted for around ten of those or so).