Odd thesis: essentially that not outsourcing, but outsourcing too early in design is the problem. Well I don't exactly think you can divorce the two...Once you make a choice to outsource larger and larger components, you're inherently losing control of the design and perhaps more importantly exact construction of those components. In so doing you open yourself to design risk. The way the author describes the primary risk of outsourcing as "business profit risk" is odd to me.
Still the article is ridiculous considering the 787's battery problem, if indeed limited only to the battery, seems like it will be a fairly simple one to fix, and an isolated incident.
I like how he lists three 787 problems, two of which are "smoke in cabin" and "fire" as if the latter two aren't likely the same root cause. Sure fuel leaking was an issue too. So we work around it.
This is typical of the internet era where we can nitpick everything and then suddenly a multi-decade project comes along and we don't know how to handle its optimization/fix process.
You might think it's odd, but it's exactly what Boeing had done in the past.
And if you think the 787's problems are confined to its batteries, please read this:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21230940
"Keith Hayward, head of research at the Royal Aeronautical Society, said that if the issue is no longer about replacing a faulty battery, it raised the prospect of Boeing having to do a major re-design.
"I think people had their fingers crossed that it was a battery fault... it looks more systemic and serious to me. I suspect it could be difficult to identify the cause," he said."
Still the article is ridiculous considering the 787's battery problem, if indeed limited only to the battery, seems like it will be a fairly simple one to fix, and an isolated incident.
I like how he lists three 787 problems, two of which are "smoke in cabin" and "fire" as if the latter two aren't likely the same root cause. Sure fuel leaking was an issue too. So we work around it.
This is typical of the internet era where we can nitpick everything and then suddenly a multi-decade project comes along and we don't know how to handle its optimization/fix process.