Tim Opitz heaved a big sigh of relief on Jan. 15 when supplier Kawasaki Heavy Industries made its first delivery — on time — of a forward fuselage for Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner to Boeing's assembly facility in Charleston, SC.

To Opitz, director of product operations and support at Boeing's Commercial Airplanes unit, the successful delivery from a key partner was one in a long series of tests that Boeing must pass in order to get the 787 off the ground. The three-model craft, designed for 210 to 330 passengers, is scheduled for first customer shipment late next year.

And Boeing can't afford to have anything go wrong. The 787 program represents the company's best bet for regaining competitive territory lost to arch-rival Airbus, which, in 2001, surpassed Boeing as the world's largest manufacturer of commercial aircraft. Even before full production, the relatively light, fuel-efficient 787 — which is designed for long-range, point-to-point travel and sells for $160 million per plane — has attracted 514 orders from airlines around the world, making it the fastest-selling commercial airplane in history, according to Boeing.

Airbus, the largest unit of European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co., meanwhile, has stumbled. The company, a consortium of European aerospace manufacturers, has suffered a two-year delay in getting its new A380 jumbo jetliner into production, partly as a result of design collaboration errors. Airbus, which is about two years behind Boeing in producing a model to directly compete with the 787, recently announced plans to cut 10,000 jobs across Europe.

But it's not just the competitive opportunity that makes the 787 a critical roll of the dice for Boeing. The stakes have been raised considerably by Boeing's decision, with the launch of the program three years ago, to radically change the way it designs and manufactures commercial airplanes.

Beginning with the 787, the $62 billion Chicago-based company has decided to transform itself from a vertically integrated enterprise that does most of its own product design, supplier management, manufacturing, and integration into a more virtual enterprise that relies heavily on partners and suppliers. That transformation, if successful, could help Boeing cut lead times while significantly reducing tooling, inventory, and other risks. It could also accelerate similar changes throughout the aerospace and defense industry. First, however, Boeing must successfully roll out a host of new processes and systems and, perhaps most challenging, persuade suppliers to transform the way they work with Boeing.

"What Boeing is trying to do will really set the standard for how you reduce time to market, from design to implementation," says Pat Russell, director of global supply at Vought Aircraft, a key 787 partner that is designing and building the plane's center fuselage and other assemblies. "We cannot do things the way we used to. With technologies changing at the speed they are, we must get to market faster. If you don't, there's somebody else out there who will."

Just about everything about the 787 program is different. Take the materials from which the airplane will be built. Rather than being composed primarily of aluminum, as most commercial aircraft historically have been, the 787 airplane is made mostly of composite materials, mainly carbon graphite. The new material will make the 787 lighter — up to 40,000 pounds lighter than Airbus' A330-200 model, Boeing estimates — and it will allow for larger windows and a more comfortable environment for passengers.

Just as radically new as the 787's materials makeup, however, is the way Boeing works with suppliers in the program. Historically, like most aerospace companies, Boeing designed all critical airplane subsystems, such as wings and fuselages, itself, and contracted and dealt directly with suppliers. The company also tended to take delivery of parts directly from build-to-print (parts built according to standard specifications) suppliers, and assembled and integrated the final product itself.

In recent years, however, Boeing has been forced — sometimes painfully — to face the limitations of that approach. As rising fuel costs and even terror attacks have impacted airlines, causing major swings in aircraft orders, OEMs like Boeing have realized that the up-front investments in tooling required to build a new plane represent growing financial risks. At the same time, experts say, aircraft lifecycles have begun to shorten, increasing the odds that Boeing's integrated approach to design and integration could create bottlenecks.