The delay in Boeingâ??s â??787 Dreamliner projectâ?? has been widely reported. Now an article in The Seattle Times has given rise to speculation about a link between Boeingâ??s problems and the units of measurement used in the US.
Dominic Gates, in an article in the Seattle Times on 1 November 2007, commented on the reasons given by the company for the six month delay on the 787 project. However, the US â??Go Metric!â?? Forum took issue with both Mr Gates and Boeingâ??s management, suggesting that some of the problems could have been caused by the use of â??cumbersome old unitsâ??: http://gometric.us/jforum/posts/list/108.page
Others have joined in the discussion. Pat Naughtin, who was guest speaker at UKMAâ??s Annual Conference in July, has written to The Seattle Times. He points out how metrication of the motor vehicle industry worldwide has simplified the creation of the international supply chain, instancing production of components for Ford in his home town of Geelong in Australia. Patâ??s thoughts on the costs of non-metrication are set out on his web site: Â http://www.metricationmatters.com/articles.
Should the problems at Boeing concern us in the UK? Possibly not. Although there are UK businesses which are sub-contractors for â??pound-inchâ?? aerospace companies in North America, the UK also has a major stake in the Airbus project, the metric rival to the 787. Nevertheless, Boeing must now reconcile the high costs of production at home with the difficulties it has discovered of moving production abroad. The outcome will certainly be of interest, if not concern, to us in the UK.
I wrote this to Dominic Gates;
2007-11-07
Mr. Gates,
I read your article with interest and find it difficult to believe that Boeing’s world-wide partners (See http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/multimedia/news/business/building-the-dreamliner/boeing-787.html) are not being able build the dreamliner according to Boeing’s design. Maybe Boeing is the problem and not the world-wide suppliers.
Lets get real here. Boeing still tries to build planes as if they were in the 19-th century, using ancient units of measurements that no one in the world has any understanding of. If Boeing sends these world-wide companies drawings in non-SI units it is perfectly understandable that they can’t build the parts to Boeing’s specs. If you haven’t a clue as to what an inch is you are not going to be able to build something in inches.
It is really about time that Boeing moved into the 21-st century and started using the units of measure that the whole world uses instead of trying to be different. The attitude of arrogance is going to cost Boeing big time.
Regards,
Dan
His response back was:
Who are you? Are you in the aviation world? Where do you live and what do you do for a living?
I wonder if he got bombarded by similar letters.
Wasn’t Concorde built using imperial units despite the face that staunchly-metric France made up one half of the partnership?
My son has been working on producing some very small sub-assemblies (3rd tier subcontractor) for Boeing for the new 787 Dreamliner. His company are having to work in imperial for Boeing, which is very strange for them - they do almost all of their work for the automotive industry, which of course is exclusively metric world wide (including the US, where he does a lot of his work). He not sure whether there is any basis to this, but he thinks that the well publicised 6 months 787 delays due to lack of fasteners availability could be due to the fact that all the fasteners are imperial, and increasingly hard to get. He mentioned that in the work he was doing, he had to source the imperial fasteners from the US, as they were unobtainable elsewhere, which caused his company some delays in delivering the first assemblies, although they were still within schedule.
At the moment, it is mostly speculation, but if you compound the imperial fasteners problem throughout the world, this could be the main reason why the 787 is very late. Boeing is ‘proud’ to work in imperial, so it is not going to admit this publicly. Personally, if I were Boeing, I would be ashamed, not proud, to be working in a mediaeval measuring system for what is supposed to be a state of the art aircraft.
According to the US metrication act of 1975 section 205b,
It is therefore the declared policy of the United States–
(1) to designate the metric system of measurement as the preferred system of weights and measures for United States trade and commerce;
(2) to require that each Federal agency, by a date certain and to the extent economically feasible by the end of the fiscal year 1992, use the metric system of measurement in its procurements, grants, and other business-related activities, except to the extent that such use is impractical or is likely to cause significant inefficiencies or loss of markets to United States firms, such as when foreign competitors are producing competing products in non- metric units;
(3) to seek out ways to increase understanding of the metric system of measurement through educational information and guidance and in Government publications; and
(4) to permit the continued use of traditional systems of weights and measures in non-business activities.
If Boeing wish to use imperial measures they need to decide whether they are a non-business activity, or just disloyal to the democratically elected US government.
Number of misconceptions. Note: I’m not defending the use of US units, but if you don’t understand the landscape, then it’s easy to laugh when you should instead cry. I would be in favor of a metric calendar and metric clock, too, as long as it’s better than the ones the French abandoned back then.
(1) US units are not “Imperial” in the common sense of Britain’s 19th century third empire (India and Africa). They instead derive from Britain’s 18th century second empire (North America and Caribbean). Although the length units are equivalent, the liquid units and dry volume units are often widely divergent from the Imperial units. Imperial units were standardized after the US became independent, and the US standardized its own units separately from Britain.
(2) No disloyalty involved. Mike is just being funny. The controlling clause is “except to the extent that such use is impractical,” which is a loophole a mile (or approximately 1.6 kilometers) wide. It’s the same principle that allows US states to declare a budget emergency every year and override various budgeting restrictions continually so that they’ve never been fnroced. Go find an average American on the street, and 90% of the time, they can’t think metric except to the extent of a 2-liter bottle of cola. Canadians find this very amusing every time they visit.
(3) US dominance in aviation has led to delayed metrication. Flight levels are given in hundreds of feet to this day in most of the world, including in metric western Europe. (Not Russia, though. Thank God, or at least Marx, for the Soviet Union?) US insularity in defense spending has also delayed the impact of Airbus, while the auto industry’s troubles with Japanese and German competition sped up their metrification. There are other worldwide industries where US units are entrenched, such as publishing: 12-point font = 1/6 of an inch, even if you print stuff out on A paper sizes.
Historian,
The font example is actually quite interesting, because it historically reflected the size of the block on which the type was carved. It doesn’t reflect the actual character height of the type. Two fonts of different faces, but the same nominal ‘point size’ can be very different in height of actual characters, and even of spaced text.
The modern desktop publishing point of 1/72 of an inch was only fixed in the 1980s and is simply a rounding of the previous standard of 1/72.27 inches, to make it more amenable to computer software. (This comes from Adobe’s PostScript; earlier rendering software such as the TeX system use the older standard).
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_(typography).
However, I think this may be a unit so well entrenched in its field that it won’t be amenable to metrication. It’s rare that anyone actually wants to know how many lines of text of a given point size fit onto a sheet of paper in modern desktop publishing; changing the typeface will cause text to reflow in any case as the width of the characters, and the spacing between them, is different for each face (with rare examples where one font has been unnaturally forced into the metrics of another, e.g. Monotype Grotesque was distorted into Helvetica’s character sizes to produce Arial).