Boeing makes the case against outsourcing
It may be a moral issue to abandon loyal American workers for cheaper labor overseas but the real problem with outsourcing is that it can cost a fortune.
And the Boeing Co. and its 787 Dreamliner is a “case in point,” says Michael Hiltzik’s in the LA Times.
The next-generation airliner is billions of dollars over budget and about three years late; the first paying passengers won’t be boarding until this fall, if then. Some of that delay stems from the plane’s advances in design, engineering and material, which made it harder to build. And a two-month machinist’s strike did not help.
“But much of the blame belongs to the company’s quantum leap in farming out the design and manufacture of crucial components to suppliers around the nation and in foreign countries such as Italy, Sweden, China, and South Korea,” says the Times.
Boeing’s idea was to save money. The reality is that it would have been cheaper to keep a lot of this work in-house, according to the newspaper.
The 787 has more foreign-made content — 30 percent — than any other Boeing plane, according to the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, the union representing Boeing engineers. That compares with just over 5 percent in the company’s workhorse 747 airliner.
“Boeing’s goal, it seems, was to convert its storied aircraft factory near Seattle to a mere assembly plant, bolting together modules designed and produced elsewhere as though from kits,” says the Times.
The drawbacks of this approach emerged early. Some of the pieces manufactured by far-flung suppliers didn’t fit together. Some subcontractors couldn’t meet their output quotas, creating huge production logjams when critical parts weren’t available in the necessary sequence.
Rather than follow its old model of providing parts subcontractors with detailed blueprints created at home, Boeing gave suppliers less detailed specifications and required them to create their own blueprints.
Departments farmed out their engineering to their own subcontractors, said Mike Bair, the former head of the 787 program. That further reduced Boeing’s ability to supervise design and manufacture.
By David Wilkening
David
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