Summary
Ah, the problems that exist when you have a backlog of 860 or so aircraft before your new design has even flown. Would that other, lesser manufacturers had such problems...
Analysis
While the aerospace topsoil-sifters and ha-ha-told-you-so doom merchants salivate over this week’s news that Boeing is relieving Vought Aerospace of any further 787 program concerns, the development comes as absolutely no surprise to those whose business is aerospace. Nor is it an unforeseen or panicked departure for Boeing, given the statement made by a senior executive two years ago that the company would examine the supply chain once the first aircraft were built and would farm out some work which it was doing in-house and bring back in some outsourced work.
The consolidation of Vought into the 787 supply chain should be seen in this light. And as Boeing marketing vice-president Randy Tinseth commented on Tuesday, “…we’re re-drawing some lines and adjusting where necessary”. In fact, when you consider the unprecedented internationalized scope of the 787 supply chain – which will be the model for the next 50 years of commercial-aircraft manufacture just as the 707 was for the first 50 years -- it is utterly astonishing that the uncoupling of Vought is the only major adjustment to the mix that’s been made so far.
That’s quite an achievement and even although the system isn’t up and running properly yet, does everything that comes out the box work first time, and perfectly? Every after-sales department of every electronic goods manufacturer around the globe as well as adult household Rubik’s Cube companies like IKEA© would be out of business in seconds if the instructions were easy to follow.
Further, if one considers the abject and repeated failure of Boeing’s only competitor, Airbus, to create a non-Airbus outsourced supply chain along Boeing’s lines for its putative A350XWB, it is clear that getting the ducks lined up (or in the European case, stopping the union ducks from quacking so loudly) is no easy matter.
EADS will look on with envy and dismay at this latest Boeing move: envy, because it has no hope of copying such decisive action given the turgidly conflicting national self-interests at play within the troubled European concern and dismay because as if 850 orders weren’t enough, Boeing’s 787 program has now been even further strengthened while the proposed Airbus competitor, the A350XWB, still remains an financed and totally uncertain prospect.
