March 2008
Al Miller found his perfect fit at Boeing not from a desire to build airplanes, but a knack for working well across many disciplines, starting with his graduate work at the University of Washington.
“My graduate research was on crystallography of bone mineral, really related to metabolism, metabolic diseases and maturation effects. I was in Roberts Hall, I was a lab rat running equipment, but my real work was with the department of nephrology, kidney diseases, and we were studying metabolic bone disease,” Miller said.
“That kind of put me on a path early in my career and interest level that tended to take me into cross-functional, cross discipline areas. Everybody’s got a thing they do: I became familiar with the idea of talking with people who knew a whole lot more about their field that you needed some information from to do your work, and how you cross-communicated and what the concepts were. In airplanes, like in other parts of life, this cross-functional, cross-discipline issue of communication is so important to be able to be successful.”
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Miller earned his bachelor’s and doctorate’s degrees in metallurgical engineering from UW, and started with Boeing in 1977.
“When I ended up coming to Boeing – originally I think I was going to be here for a few years and go back to academia,” Miller said with a smile, sitting in his Everett office filled with photographs of airplanes and other flight paraphernalia. “This didn’t work out the way I planned.”
More than 30 years later, it seems Miller made the right choice. His exuberance for his work is infectious; he is zealous as he speaks about his career with the aerospace leader. He serves as technology integration director of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner program, a position ideal for someone with Miller’s propensity for working with many people in many fields.
“We’ve overseen the technology development efforts from all these different disciplines, whether it’s aerodynamics, manufacturing, quality control, non-destructive inspection, structures, materials, electrical systems, air-conditioning ducts, high-temperature materials around the engines and things of that nature to help the program design teams have the form and technology available to them that they can incorporate into the design-build process.”
Miller speaks more about his role with the 787 program, and what the highly publicized plane will look like, in “Building the Future of Commercial Aviation: Boeing's 787 Dreamliner,” now airing on ResearchChannel.
So will the new aircraft live up to all the hype?
“I think the Dreamliner does represent a shift in how we think about airplanes in that we’ve dramatically used more of these polymer matrix composites materials. And while we’d always been using polymer matrix composites in some form going back to probably the 747 at least, if not the 707 days, the reality is this is a big change in scope and scale, in terms of wings and fuselage. What that also did is that we have a lot more integrated structures.
“In terms of the tailoring, by being integrated that means it didn’t always have to be the same, the composites allows us to change the part performance and aeroelastic responses and other things over its length and dimensions – very difficult to do with isotropic materials. And composites are inherently anisotropic so that allows you to do tailoring.”
However, working with more composites also meant a more complex manufacturing process. Boeing found counterbalance with more design tools and computational systems.
“And I don’t think we’ll go back,” Miller said. “We’re going to do more tailoring now, the drive is there, the tools are now seeing value, people are going to keep investing in those tools, so we’ll keep moving forward in that area.
“In the future, it’s likely that we’ll see a lot more tailoring of airplanes to unique smaller market niches. The economics in the past is we have to build an airplane, and then we have to sell a gazillion units to off-set that huge cost and as you reduce those cost factors, you get to optimize your airplane, so you actually come up with more efficient fleets of airplanes that are subtly different to fit different mission areas. I think that’s an interesting consequence of the use of more polymer composites, more modeling tools, the change in the paradigm about how we do manufacturing and assembly, that come together that allows us to see the future differently.”
The Dreamliner’s design has been labeled “revolutionary.”
“You could make an argument – and this is all speculation at this point – that the 87 will do to airplane design and composition a kind of paradigm change similar to what the 07 did as we moved into the jet age,” Miller said. “That was a big deal it wasn’t so clear it was going to win at the time, there was a lot of speculation, drawbacks and problems, things you got to learn how to do in the 707 days.
“And I’m sure we’ll learn more about composites. Looking back 10 or 15 years we’ll think, ‘Oh, how naïve we were back in the early 2000s when we did this.’ Even now, it makes a great airplane, and yet we see so many ways we continue to improve and enhance.”
So, what will it feel like to fly in something so revolutionary?
Miller says you’ll notice the difference.
“We lowered the cabin altitude from 8,000 to 6,000 feet – that’s the altitude you feel you’re at when you’re flying – and that’s particularly important for an airplane like the 787, which is a long-haul airplane. You’re up there a long time. By being able to lower it, our data says a lot more people feel a lot better.”
Miller also noted larger, dimmable windows and filtered air.
“You’re going to see really big bins, you’re going to have really cool lighting from LEDs on the sides and they’re going to be dimming different colors and shades depending on the part of the flight regime. If your airline chooses, you can have great spacious seating arrangements. We don’t control that.
“And that goes along with things like in-flight entertainment systems, we made some tremendous strides there, but that’s a customer airline selection, how many features they put in.
“We have provided for the passenger a great experience, and how it gets translated will be based upon the kind of market the plane will be used in.”
Other changes won’t be obvious to the average passenger.
“Things you wouldn’t see are all the advances we made in the flight control system and the computer avionics – if you will, the nerve system of the airplane – bringing that up to the next level.
“This airplane, rather than use hot air off the engine, we power the airplane off generators off the engine. That system then affords us a lot of electrical integration, so the flight crew is easier to keep track of. We think it will give us better dispatch reliability – it’ll be there on time more often. And lastly, it weighs less.”
Designing a better airplane also meant making “environmentally progressive” choices, Miller said.
“When we first started the program, we said green – or what we now call ‘environmentally progressive’ – had to be part of our strategy,” Miller said. “Most of the time, the things that make a better airplane also tend to be more efficient, also they’re things that tend to make it green. I think that, by and large, the idea of being environmentally progressive was inherent in the design of the airplane, both interior and exterior.”
In addition to a handful of VIP customers who will certainly be taking advantage of all the upgrades Boeing has thought to offer, more than 56 airlines have orders in for Dreamliners.
“It’s a very broad base of airlines, and they have a lot of widely different missions they’re going to do with this airplane, so it’s very flexible,” Miller said.
Demand for the Dreamliner is just one piece of a larger picture indicating continued growth in the aerospace industry.
“We expect over the next 20 years in the world fleet, not just the Boeing fleet, to be 28,600 airplanes. So that means we’ll have about 36,400 airplanes in service in the year 2026. Eighty percent will be new since now. So most of the growth will happen because of the airplanes we’re building now. Thus, you see this huge order base for the 787.
“Essentially, what we’ve said all along is that what drives world traffic growth of air travel, by and large over the years, has been world gross domestic product (GDP). As long as you believe that we’re going to continue to have growing GDP, we’re going to continue to want more airplanes.”
That doesn’t mean it will all be smooth sailing, or flying, as the case may be.
“It’s hard for me to visualize anything other than a positive long-term outlook for aviation, but I do think that it doesn’t belie the fact that there will be bumps in the road. To the extent that we’ll have business cycles in the world, we’ll have ups and downs. But the long-term vector is clearly positive.”
When he’s not helping to shape the future of the aerospace industry, Al Miller often speaks to students about his industry. They ask for advice about pursuing a career in the field, but his answer is more general.
“You should have passion about what you’re doing,” Miller said. “Don’t do something because somebody else says it’s the important thing to do. It’s got to be something you really have a passion about because then you will do the things to be really good at it and who knows what the opportunities will be in the future?
“If you think passion, and you like to do the kind of things you’re doing, you like to work with the people you’re working with in that environment, that’s probably a pretty good career path. I don’t know if it’s going to pay well or not, but that’s probably a pretty good path.
“It’s all OK, because you’ll find your way forward.”
