Originally Posted by
tdracer
Sorry, but that entire story smells of BS. For starters, they don't build 737 fuselages in Renton - they are assembled at Spirit in Wichita and shipped by rail to Renton as a complete structure - structural work on the fuselage in Renton is minimal. About all that happens to the fuselage assembly in Renton is the various wiring and systems are added (and of course the wings and tail are bolted on.
As for the 737 wing - it's assembled on the same type of Gemco automated machinery that puts together the 767 and 777 wings (except of course for the 777X composite wing).
It may be a bit exaggerated, though, based on YT videos (never been to such a factory myself) I saw (both the sterile Airbus assembly as the craftsmanship style Boeing assembly lines), I recognize what
WHBM writes. The wording/details might be a bit off, though the general impression: I'd say, spot on.
And let me add, that a craftsmanship style does not need to be "bad", though it has all ingredients build in, to be relaxed about applying the approved building guidelines, especially, when low-paid/low-educated workers are on the floor.
When the working environment is disorganized, keeping up a proper working habit is quite difficult. Not to say, when you want to change working habits, the first thing you do is creating a "clean" and visually "organized" working environment (easy to do) and work from there to change the working habits (the difficult part).