On Nov 6, 4:32 pm, GB wrote:
[snip]
What concerns me most is that little old me - never been near an
aeroplane manufacturing gig in my life - spends a couple of years
at manglement school and *none* of this stuff at Boeing is of
*any* surprise to me, and yet a multi-billion dollar manufacturing
organisation that /should/ be apple to afford all of the best
manglement types that money can buy still seems to be struggling
with basic textbook level manufacturing management issues. It's
bizarre... maybe the frogs are better at making aeroplanes after
all?

I think the point you are overlooking is that in a design
program,
where parts have to be optimized in concert, outsourcing much of it
won't result in any cost or efficiency based savings because the
amount of oversight required will absorb any potential savings.
Airplanes
require a significant amount of interactive optimization that is hard
to
achieve with multiple suppliers. You can outsource relative "stand
alone"
components with narrow performance requirements. Tires, brakes,
to some extent seating and interior components, etc. can all be
designed
relatively separately from the aircraft. However, primary structure,
interconnected hydrolic systems, electrical systems, etc are difficult
to develop as stand alone systems. Engines have always been a
tough place in the design process and most aircraft are in effect
designed
"around" the engines. The engines actually are well ahead of the
aircraft in the development cycle because they will tend to define
what
can be achieved with the rest of the aircraft. Even at that, however,
there
is very tight connections between the engine developer and the
airframer.
And in the end, virtually every major aircraft will go through an "re-
engine"
phase in its life, something which is planned for up front.

All of which is to say that the engineers know perfectly well how
to
manage an integration project on this scale, and they have the numbers
to know where savings can be made by outsourcing, and where they
might as well be kept "in house". Some times one just has to admit
that the engineers know what they are talking about, and the
management
is just blowing smoke.