The aircraft at the back of the line was surrounded by large tooling structures—dubbed “the mother of all tool towers”—that hold wings and tail in place while they’re fastened to the fuselage.

Farther up the line, aircraft were less encumbered by the scaffolding that surrounded earlier models. The factory floor was also cleaned up, with only a dozen people left from the hundreds who worked at computers a year ago, struggling to keep track of the part changes needed to make the aircraft flyable.

Engineers watched over the scene from a glass-walled aerie—the “Production Integration Center”—perched along the sides of the factory. Their job is to coordinate progress among the 787’s prime contractors around the world 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They closely watched recent Asian typhoons to make sure the weather wouldn’t interrupt crucial assembly arrivals.

Getting the production system working is an important step, said Richard Aboulafia, an aerospace analyst from the Teal Group. Now that the core production system is starting to work as designed, Boeing should be able to show steady progress.

“They’re good at moving up the learning curve,” he said. “It’s really important to show progress because they’ve already lost a couple of orders. The most important message they can send is that they can move quickly to satisfy demand.”

Currently, Boeing has 850 firm 787 orders. The program has lost 74 orders since its peak in 2008.

Suppliers are honing their production, too, and that’s allowing them to take on more work from the Everett plant as originally planned. For example, workers at Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita are now putting primer paint on nose sections. This should help Boeing workers raise the production rate to 10 Dreamliners per month by 2013.

“We were really anxious to begin painting the airplane to reduce flow in Everett,” said George, director of 787 operations in Wichita.

The Wichita factory also wants to test all of the electrical systems in the nose section. Nose sections currently leave Wichita stuffed with cables, plumbing, and all the avionics, so that workers in Everett only have to install the aircraft’s interior and test everything.

Sometime between aircraft Nos. 20 and 30, technicians in Wichita will start testing the nose sections, relieving Everett of the task, George said.

“Then Boeing just has to be sure the connections are functioning properly, which leads to less time in their factory to do testing,” he said.

George added that he’s seeing improvement among his own suppliers, such as Swedish contractor Saab Aerospace, which builds doors for the nose section.

The doors needed a lot of work early in the program, and therefore had to be finished and installed in Everett. But now the doors are closer to meeting specifications and are being delivered directly to Wichita.

By aircraft No. 16, George expects to be installing completed doors in Wichita—making it one less job for the Everett plant.

“With each airplane, the components are more complete, and that’s really the key for the rate increases ahead of us,” he said.