Originally Posted by
DC777Fan
Ah, OK, so you meant outsourcing in general--as in the components of the plane. I thought that by saying that they should've kept all manufacturing in Seattle that you were saying opening a new plant in SC was to blame. Apologies.
I can never keep track of the new versions of an existing model, but Boeing did make a decision a while back to reverse course.
The 787 was deliberately planned as a distributed, global effort - part of a larger move to reduce the US Boeing footprint to engineers and assembly plants (large component assembly - fuselage, wings, etc.) This was expected to result in significant savings (qualified, experience machinists, for example, are expensive, and Boeing hoped to get out of manufacturing entirely and focus on design and final assembly).
A lot more work is being brought back to the US/in house for the new models of existing planes as a result of the problems with the 787 that caused so many of the delays and rework.