[jhghjmhnbgv]

It wasn't the foreign suppliers that were the problem - Mitsubishi delivered the wings on time. It's was the excessive outsourcing to layers and layers of subcontractors without enough oversight. So a one mall plating shop in Albuquerque goes out of business and a critical path component is missing.

This is fairly common in defense, highly specialized components are subbed out to small shops - there are lots around LA - the problem here was that there was so many layers of sub-sub-sub contractors all being bidded out to the cheapest supplier nobody had any idea who was making what. That works for Walmart - it doesn't work for Boeing.

How they thought they were going to ensure40years supply of spare parts is anybodies guess

[quanticle]

Just to elaborate on your point, the outsourcing model works for Walmart because Walmart is selling numerous separate products, rather than an integrated whole. It seems that Boeing forgot that lesson and started thinking of their airplane as a "collection of parts flying in close formation".

[jhghjmhnbgv]

Also very few of Walmart's products are critical path - if they run out of lemon scented cleanup squares the store still opens (gratuitous hitch hikers reference)

[ChuckMcM]

How does it work for EADS ? (Airbus manufacturer)

[jhghjmhnbgv]

There are very much fewer sub-contractors. Major system components are built in different plants in different countries but all by a handful of airbus subsidiaries or major aerospace corps. So the supply chain is much shorter and shallower

There were still screwups, a different version of the CAD package meant changes didn't propagate and the Airbus 380 wiring looms were all made the wrong length.

There were early warnings of Boeing's problem. The prototype had to be built with non-aerospace rivets which had to all be removed and the plane rebuilt for it's first flight. Aerospace grade rivets were in short supply and Boeing was just looking for the cheapest supplier who didn't deliver.

Japanese companies taught us about the value of close working relationships with suppliers 20years ago, the car makers have learned it but Boeing didn't - they acted more like a Walmart buyer and it cost them.

[potatolicious]

> " the car makers have learned it but Boeing didn't"

Worked in automotive before (albeit briefly), I don't think the car makers have learned it at all. While I was there I saw GM, Chrysler, Ford, and a couple foreign (i.e., no US presence) makers shop constantly for the lowest bidder on everything, similar to the Boeing story here.

And like the Boeing story, these projects quickly became clusterfucks. As a supplier ourselves we saw the least of it - I'd hate to be the guy at GM handling projects like this.

My first week there I had to rescue a project from the brink of a multi-million dollar fine. There was a critical injection-molded plastic component in the product, but we were too cheap to pay the local provider (that we'd been with for the last couple decades) to cut the mold, and instead contracted it out to a Chinese shop an ocean away and half the price. Well, said shop was late delivering, and then the mold got held up in customs. Then management tried to squeeze a deal on the plastic provider, who turned out to be late, also.

At the end of the day the company had to airlift a few container-fulls of product from Canada to South Korea. The contractual fine was worse than that cost... and I'm pretty sure we wiped away any savings a few times over with this whole debacle.

Too much outsourcing, too far away from home, with no ability to keep an eye on things.