Boeing picks robots over people as its order book booms
Mechanisation reduces need for manual labour
FOR MOST of its 100-year history, when Boeing turned out more planes, jobs soared and the Seattlearea economy prospered. When production fell, lay-offs followed and the local economy crashed.
The cycle was so predictable that Boeing workers had a phrase for it: “Headcount goes by rate.”
Now that longstanding cycle has broken down.
The world’s largest plane maker is in the middle of its biggest peacetime boom, churning out 20 percent more planes than when the last big cycle peaked in the 1990s. But it is doing so with one-third fewer workers. In their place, Boeing is turning to robots and outsourcing.
Transformation
In the past year, Boeing installed four banks of rivetting machines at the factory that makes its 737 aircraft in Renton, Washington. It switched them on in May and Boeing said the 60 ton machines work twice as fast as people, with two-thirds fewer defects.
At its sprawling plant in Everett, Washington, Boeing has installed robotic arms to drill and rivet together fuselages for the 777 jetliner.
The machines took “what is in the neighbourhood of 50 000 to 70 000 fasteners in the 777 fuselage that are today applied by hand and automating them”, chief executive Dennis Muilenburg said in September.
It was a “huge transformation in how we build airplanes”, he said.
Boeing said automation was essential to improve quality and worker safety, lower costs and keep up with its European rival Airbus, which also is automating and churning out more planes.
Boeing and Airbus are catching up with the rest of manufacturing. There will be no let up in the loss of jobs.
But while Boeing said the robots had not caused any lay-offs, the company is not predicting significant job growth either.
“Increased automation means we can go higher in rates with a stable workforce,” said Barry Lewis, the head of wing manufacturing operations at Boeing’s 737 plant.
Manufacturing job loss is well documented at auto plants, textile mills and other US factories. More than 6 million jobs were lost from 2000 to 2009 as companies automated and sent work overseas, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Now the shift is coming to Boeing. The company’s airplane unit has hired about 33 000 people since employment bottomed out at about 50 000 in 2006. But that 66 percent increase in labour has allowed Boeing to make almost twice as many planes, meaning the ratio of workers to planes has plummeted.
Less labour
The plane maker’s current backlog of 5 600 plane orders worth $426 billion (R5.97 trillion) dwarfs the $94bn tally during its last boom in the late 1990s. But today’s workforce is about one-third smaller – 83 000 compared with 122 300 when Boeing’s employment last peaked in 1998. Back then, Boeing made 564 planes a year, about 217 workers per plane. This year it aims to make 760 planes, using about 109 workers per plane, and the figure is falling.
Amid the biggest commercial aircraft boom in its history, Boeing’s airplane division employs fewer workers per plane than during all other booms since World War II.
“Boeing and Airbus are catching up with the rest of manufacturing,” said Robert Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and former labour secretary in the Clinton Administration. “There will be no let up in the loss of manufacturing jobs.”
Boeing’s employment growth stopped in 2013, the year Washington state approved $8.7bn in tax credits for the industry. In return for the incentives, companies were meant to “maintain and grow” aerospace jobs in the state. Since then Boeing has shed nearly 3 000 jobs in Washington, fuelling tensions with its unions and state officials.
Machinist and engineering unions, which represent about 51 000 Boeing workers, have joined with state legislators sponsoring measures that would tie the tax credits to job and wage targets.
“The frustration level in the community is high,” said state representative Mike Sells, whose district includes Boeing’s largest factory.
As recently as 2012, teams of workers drilled and rivetted 777 fuselages. That year, as Boeing lifted output of 777s by 18 percent, it began using machines to drill the holes. Now, robot arms drill and install the rivets. Similar robot arms covered with protective cloth are now painting 777 wings, applying a more precise coat than people can.
European rival Airbus also is automating, and industry experts say it is doing so at a faster pace than Boeing, partly driven by rigid labour laws in Europe that made it difficult to lay off workers in a downturn. The European giant is working on technology to more easily configure robots and run them with common software. It also is testing a system that uses hand tools laden with sensors and Google Glass-type headsets to validate that workers install parts correctly.
Boeing and Airbus decline to say how much labour the machines save, but suppliers say the machines reduce human labour substantially.
On the 777 line, the labour savings from automated rivetting could be more than 100-fold. One person could run eight sets of robot arms that each did the work of 16 people, replacing 128 workers, said Surinder Lamba, president of Apache Aerospace, which supplies tooling to Boeing’s commercial jet programmes.
Outsourcing also is limiting Boeing’s US job count. Boeing said in September it would open a factory in China, its first outside the US.
Boeing’s plans for new factories also suggest it will rely on robots even more in future. – Reuters