As per the current schedule boeing wont bump up to the 10/month before they have produced around 112 aircraft which according to most industry people is enough to get a ” hang of ” the process and iron out all the chinks . The current setup can support greater no.s then 10 a month ( i am not allowed to disclose the exact numbers) without any infrastructural addition (although human recources would needed to be added) . Boeing will most likely up the production to 12 a month or maybe even higher ( there are inside talks of 14-16 a month aswell) and a lot of that can be acheived through the current setup (without adding another line) . I personally estimate that boeing would need around 14-16 a month if they want to sustain healthy sales for its 787-10 (when launched) without infringing upon the delivery slots for its 787-8 and 787-9 aircrafts . We wont see any increase in production before 2011 ( optimistic) or 2012(more likely) but one will surely be there . Expect a descision to bump production ( exact boeing statement with factual no.s) to be made right about the time they go in and launch the 787-10 industrially .

The first dozen (maybe more) aircraft will take a little longer until the procedures are tested, evaluated, wrinkles ironed out and process streamlined.

IIRC the first 6 would take about 1 month each to put together , because boeing is doing all the stuffing , wiring , fine tuning , cleaning , smoothing etc on the barrels . The program was all pushed into higher gear in january when some suppliers were late ( Alenia for one) and a descision was taken by boeing and the global team that to keep on track boeing would invest some money and hire folks to stuff these barrels and do all the other time consuming stuff in house until the suppliers caught up .The first barrels form alenia were barely delivered on time , they were so “RAW” that they werent even dusted off and debris removed before shipping them . However boeing can only gauge the true rate of assembly once pre-stufffed barrels start to trickle in and that would be after the 7th aircraft ( thats not the 7 aircraft but 7th production aircraft) , however having said that the current ramp up strategy gives 6 months of catch up time so if something with the schedule goes wrong then boeing has some “Juice” on surplus in the system to catch up by increasing production . The one problem is titanium as long term contracts need to be re-done with the russian suppliers and those things are very tricky (specially with the russians) . There is tremendous pressure now on the suppliers to deliver as airbus is also now in the composite , titanium market (more so then before) and its A350 jet is also expected to sell well. So all in all it might not be economical for boeing to bump up production by a whole lot as renogiated contracts will most likely be more expensive due to increase in demand for things ranging from composites , titanium fastners etc etc etc .