Reducing flow time in aircraft manufacturing

The assembly of aircraft is a labor-intensive process that exhibits a significant learning-curve effect and that requires long flow times and costly work-in-process inventories. This paper describes the production context, the cost of flow time in this context, and some of the causes for the long flow times. We then develop an argument for a firm to use improvements in labor productivity to reduce flow times. Boeing has implemented the recommendations from this research and has obtained significant benefits from reducing flow times.