LA TIMES: 787 Dreamliner teaches Boeing costly lesson on outsourcing

[Omaha Steve]

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/feb/15/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20110215

The airliner is billions of dollars over budget and about three years late. Much of the blame belongs to the company's farming out work to suppliers around the nation and in foreign countries.

February 15, 2011|Michael Hiltzik

The biggest mistake people make when talking about the outsourcing of U.S. jobs by U.S. companies is to treat it as a moral issue.

Sure, it's immoral to abandon your loyal American workers in search of cheap labor overseas. But the real problem with outsourcing, if you don't think it through, is that it can wreck your business and cost you a bundle.


Boeing employees work on a 787 Dreamliner at the company's factory in Everett,… (Stephen Brashear / Getty Images)


Case in point: Boeing Co. and its 787 Dreamliner.

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 the delay stems from the plane's advances in design, engineering and material, which made it harder to build. A two-month machinists strike in 2008 didn't 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. Boeing's dream was to save money. The reality is that it would have been cheaper to keep a lot of this work in-house.

The 787 has more foreign-made content — 30% — 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% in the company's workhorse 747 airliner.

FULL story at link.

[foxfeet]

1. Fuckin' A! nt

[damntexdem]

2. Companies like Boeing dump thousands of productive, experienced workers ...

and then complain when they get shit from outsource purveyors of schlock.

[customerserviceguy]

3. I believe the reason for the outsourcing

is to make it more politically palatable for the airlines in those countries to buy planes from Boeing than from Airbus. That said, it clearly came back to bite them in the ass.