Dreamliner Becomes Nightmare

[mgc1961]

Eight years ago, managers at the American airplane manufacturer Boeing had a brainstorm. Their idea: Build airplanes the same way the automobile industry manufactures cars, with contractors producing entire components that are then assembled in a final step. That dream resulted in Boeing's new long-range 787, the first model to be built using this modular principle. And perhaps it was that approach that inspired the plane's name: Dreamliner.

A visit to Boeing's factory in Everett, Washington, north of Seattle, shows what's become of that heady vision. Here, gleaming airplane bodies stand nose to tail on a long factory work floor, as if on an assembly line. Most of them have already received the final coat of paint, adorned with logos for airlines such as Air India and Japan Airlines.

So far, though, not one of the planes, which cost up to $185 million (€131 million) each, has been delivered to buyers. They haven't even received official authorization, due to problems with the software and electronics. Instead, the finished jets are taking up space in the area behind the building and on a nearby airfield.

There are already around two dozen planes waiting here, with more to join them in the next weeks and months. Boeing also plans to move part of the fleet to Texas for retrofitting. This spectacular airplane stockpile in Washington could one day go down in aviation history -- as a monument to the hubris of Boeing managers and a warning for future generations.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,753891,00.html

[n2doc]

1. Outsourcing sucks

Hope they have learned their lesson and build the next gen planes here in the US at Union facilities.

[mgc1961]

5. Outsourcing has been tried by my employer too.

From what I've seen, it's been a nearly universal failure.

[liberal N proud]

2. They soared to new heights with the hype on this thing

[Marblehead]

3. Dumb asses

[FreakinDJ]

4. They lost money on the Outsourcing

I posted an article here about it 2 months ago

[Historic NY]

6. Bigger isn't always better & old ideas sometimes are really better...

We seem to have lost a learning curve in this country. But its in all things, from the press rooms to space. The tendency is to shove the old ways out with fancy new ideas that tend to fail down the line. There are only so many ways to build a mouse trap. We are losing tried & true methods for the sake of globalization. Micro managers use to manage and bean counter used to control the spending, apparently they don't look to the past. Even our recent pass say when America was the arsenal of democracy, WWII. Henry Ford perfected the assembly line, Kaiser developed modular ship construction. They all has success and failure, but failure then was a matter of life & death. Many of our planes ie; B-17's, then were built by different companies all with unique quirks due to interpretation and different execution in design. Ford's built bombers differed from Lockheed's, Boeing's & Douglas's. Kaiser had problems in keeping his ship together from differences in welding vs tried & true riveting. These companies worked things out on the assembly line then, where as now boxes of incorrectly or poorly executed designs of parts languish. Building it here sometimes is cheaper in the long run than say having it built over there somewhere. Cost factors can skyrocket when incorrectly made items show up on the assembly room floor.

An example, a friend in the lighting business has components made in China. They send an item over and its made but somewhere in the process on the assembly line a change is made say from metric thread screws to standard thread. The line has to stop now, as the components will not work. He has to pack up the inventory and send it back in order to have them corrected and usable. The expense goes up and production time increases. The stuff comes back again with the change. Back before globalization the items would have been sent to a machine shop on-site and immediately retrofitted.

Were losing skill sets on the factory floor, because some managers are driven by brainstorms, rather than the old axiom "can do", its now "can't due" the part doesn't work.

[clixtox]

7. Every tried strategy has only one goal...

to lower prevailing wages in the USA.

Management of these greedy, soul-less corporations couldn't give a rat's ass about anything except increasing profits every quarterly report.

I am sure they will spend tens of millions trying to make the outsourcing process work as conceived before spending a dime bringing these jobs back to the USA.

When the last union has been quashed and wages have fallen to third world levels, matching our corporate masters goals, will any manufacturing jobs ever be returned.

Only then...

[blue97keet]

8. Globally integrated just in time supply chain = all the xmas tree lights wired in series,

*six nuclear reactors all in a row
*mortgage securitization spreading radioactive plague of toxic assets around the world
*EU bankrupt all at once

Such is the system design philosophy of the globalist economy.

[fasttense]

9. And that is the difference between managing an airplane building corporation

and a profit building corporation.

Is Boeing's main function to build good airplanes or to make a profit for their CEO and shareholders?

Boeing used their reserves to buy back their stock and make a profit for the CEO, executives and shareholders instead of to invest in building more airplanes.

They thought subcontractors would fund the cost of building airplanes for them. Boeing didn't and doesn't want to build good airplanes, they want their subcontractors to build them while Boeing rakes in the profit. But it turns out their subcontractors and sub-subcontractors would have to have the same employees (though at cheaper wages) and the same expertise that Boeing had. On top of that, each sub-subcontractor requires additional time and money for each leg the part/component must travel. And of course no manger or executive could have foreseen the days of cheap travel quickly going away.

And idiot RepubliCONS claim we should run government like these stupid businesses.