Boeing wants to build its next plane in the metaverse

In Boeing’s Future Factory, immersive 3D engineering projects will be combined with communicating robots, while mechanics will be connected around the world by $3,500 HoloLens headsets made by Microsoft .

It’s all part of the aircraft manufacturer’s ambitious new strategy to unify extensive air design, production and services operations into a single digital ecosystem—in just two years.

The company enters 2022 struggling to reassert its engineering dominance after the 737 MAX crisis, while laying the groundwork for a future aircraft program. It also aims to prevent future manufacturing problems, such as the structural flaws that surrounded its 787 Dreamliner last year.

“It’s about beefing up engineering,” Boeing chief engineering Greg Hyslop told Reuters in his first interview in nearly two years. “We’re talking about changing the way we work across the company.”

Companies like Ford and Meta, which owns Facebook, are embracing an immersive virtual world sometimes called the metaverse — a shared digital space that often uses virtual reality or augmented reality and is accessible via the Internet.

Like Airbus, Boeing’s bet for its next new aircraft is to build and connect three-dimensional virtual replicas of the jet and a production system capable of running simulations.

Reviewing practices can bring powerful changes. More than 70% of quality problems at Boeing date back to some kind of design problem, said Hyslop. Boeing believes these digital tools will be essential to bringing a new aircraft to market from scratch in just four to five years.

Still, the plan faces enormous challenges. Some critics point to technical problems in the Boeing 777X mini-jumbo and the T-7A RedHawk military training jet, which were developed using digital tools.

Boeing has also placed a lot of emphasis on shareholder returns at the expense of engineering dominance and continues to cut research and development spending, said Teal Group analyst Richard Aboulafia.

Boeing itself has begun to understand that digital technology alone will not solve all problems, and that it needs to come together with organizational and culture changes across the company, industry sources said.

The company recently hired engineer Linda Hapgood to oversee the “digital transformation.”

Boeing “built” the first T-7A jets in simulation, following a model design. The T-7A was launched on the market in just 36 months. Even so, the program is struggling with parts shortages, design delays and additional testing requirements.

“This is a long game,” said Boeing Chief Engineer Greg Hyslop. “Each of these efforts was solving part of the problem. But now what we want to do is end-to-end.”