4 ms·

The 777 program is a case study in program management and engineering excellence, and that aircraft is still an amazing piece of quality design and engineering.

by ptmcc 7y ago

The 777 program is a case study in program management and engineering excellence, and that aircraft is still an amazing piece of quality design and engineering. It is so sad that the Boeing of those days is dead and buried. Everything since the MD takeover ("merger") has been a race to the bottom.

teachrdan 7y ago
Might there be a literal case study of the 777? I read a book about the development of the 747 and it was absolutely fascinating--particularly the (now extinct?) Boeing obsession with engineering safety. [0] Jumbo: The Making of the Boeing 747 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22849121-jumbo https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22849121-jumbo
- mannykannot 7y ago
  As you liked that, consider "Twenty-First-Century Jet: The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777" by Karl Sabbagh. I believe there is also a video series from PBS. The 777 development program might have been Boeing's technical apotheosis.
  - markdown 7y ago
    For anyone else: "the highest point in the development of something; a culmination or climax."
  - sgnelson 7y ago
    The PBS documentary is linked in the above article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oyWZjdXxlw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oyWZjdXxlw with this quote: "There is a scene in the first episode of a five-part 1996 PBS series on the making of the 777, Boeing’s first plane to employ “fly-by-wire” technology, in which an engineer discusses the company’s philosophy of computer-assisted aviation: One of the things that we do in the basic design is the pilot always has the ultimate authority of control. There’s no computer on the airplane that he cannot override, or turn off if the ultimate comes, but, in terms of any of our features, even those that are built to prevent the airplane from stalling, which is the lowest speed you can fly and beyond which you would lose the control. We don’t inhibit that totally; we make it difficult, but if something in the box should inappropriately think that it’s stalling when it isn’t, the pilot can say, this is wrong and he can override it. That’s a fundamental difference in philosophy that we have versus some of the competition.
- mbrodersen 7y ago
  I highly recommend the book (Jumbo: The Making of the Boeing 747). One of the best "how succesfull engineering is really done" books I have ever read.
tzs 7y ago
I remember reading a series of articles in the Seattle Times about a Boeing plane that was nearing completion. I'm not sure it was the 777, but the timeline fits, as I'm sure I was reading these articles around 1992 or 1993. What follows is from my memory of those articles--the details may be wrong, but the high level is right. Anyway, the plane had a very different control architecture from previous Boeing planes, including more reliance on software. The FAA was concerned about the software, and the possibility of a software failure taking out all three instances of some of the redundant systems. The FAA normally required a lot more testing of such software than would fit with the schedule Boeing wanted. Boeing and the FAA agreed that in these systems, the three instances would run separate implementations of the software, writing by separate development teams working from a common spec, but not sharing anything else. The FAA would then allow the software to be deployed on the accelerated schedule Boeing wanted. This turned out to take longer than Boeing expected, and started threatening to delay the schedule, and hurt Boeing's chances against the newest Airbus plane that was aiming for a similar market. Politicians got word of this, and the FAA was successfully pressured into relaxing the redundancy requirements, letting Boeing go ahead with running the same brand new software on all instances of the redundant systems. The software turned out fine, so this worked out, but it still was a dangerous shortcut that the FAA allowed (or was forced to allow) that put competing with Airbus over safety. So I'm not sure things were actually all that different in the '90s. They just were luckier.
- phkahler 7y ago
  I recall reading that giving different groups the specs like that and writing different code doesnt actually work well. They tend to write the same bugs. In this case it may he that they got to choose the best of the 3 versions, so it may not have been a waste. Formal unit testing is another idea that turns out to be relatively low value but is widely regarded as a best practice. IIRC NASA studied both of these, but I dont have a reference.

by ptmcc 7y ago

teachrdan 7y ago

Might there be a literal case study of the 777? I read a book about the development of the 747 and it was absolutely fascinating--particularly the (now extinct?) Boeing obsession with engineering safety. [0] Jumbo: The Making of the Boeing 747 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22849121-jumbo https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22849121-jumbo

mannykannot 7y ago
As you liked that, consider "Twenty-First-Century Jet: The Making and Marketing of the Boeing 777" by Karl Sabbagh. I believe there is also a video series from PBS. The 777 development program might have been Boeing's technical apotheosis.
- markdown 7y ago
  For anyone else: "the highest point in the development of something; a culmination or climax."
- sgnelson 7y ago
  The PBS documentary is linked in the above article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oyWZjdXxlw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oyWZjdXxlw with this quote: "There is a scene in the first episode of a five-part 1996 PBS series on the making of the 777, Boeing’s first plane to employ “fly-by-wire” technology, in which an engineer discusses the company’s philosophy of computer-assisted aviation: One of the things that we do in the basic design is the pilot always has the ultimate authority of control. There’s no computer on the airplane that he cannot override, or turn off if the ultimate comes, but, in terms of any of our features, even those that are built to prevent the airplane from stalling, which is the lowest speed you can fly and beyond which you would lose the control. We don’t inhibit that totally; we make it difficult, but if something in the box should inappropriately think that it’s stalling when it isn’t, the pilot can say, this is wrong and he can override it. That’s a fundamental difference in philosophy that we have versus some of the competition.
mbrodersen 7y ago
I highly recommend the book (Jumbo: The Making of the Boeing 747). One of the best "how succesfull engineering is really done" books I have ever read.

tzs 7y ago

I remember reading a series of articles in the Seattle Times about a Boeing plane that was nearing completion. I'm not sure it was the 777, but the timeline fits, as I'm sure I was reading these articles around 1992 or 1993. What follows is from my memory of those articles--the details may be wrong, but the high level is right. Anyway, the plane had a very different control architecture from previous Boeing planes, including more reliance on software. The FAA was concerned about the software, and the possibility of a software failure taking out all three instances of some of the redundant systems. The FAA normally required a lot more testing of such software than would fit with the schedule Boeing wanted. Boeing and the FAA agreed that in these systems, the three instances would run separate implementations of the software, writing by separate development teams working from a common spec, but not sharing anything else. The FAA would then allow the software to be deployed on the accelerated schedule Boeing wanted. This turned out to take longer than Boeing expected, and started threatening to delay the schedule, and hurt Boeing's chances against the newest Airbus plane that was aiming for a similar market. Politicians got word of this, and the FAA was successfully pressured into relaxing the redundancy requirements, letting Boeing go ahead with running the same brand new software on all instances of the redundant systems. The software turned out fine, so this worked out, but it still was a dangerous shortcut that the FAA allowed (or was forced to allow) that put competing with Airbus over safety. So I'm not sure things were actually all that different in the '90s. They just were luckier.

phkahler 7y ago
I recall reading that giving different groups the specs like that and writing different code doesnt actually work well. They tend to write the same bugs. In this case it may he that they got to choose the best of the 3 versions, so it may not have been a waste. Formal unit testing is another idea that turns out to be relatively low value but is widely regarded as a best practice. IIRC NASA studied both of these, but I dont have a reference.