Yes, I are a Boeing Enginerd; no I did not have a hand writing that missive; yes there are good, accurate points in it; yes there is also a fair amount of whining that dilutes an interesting viewpoint.
It circulated around the offices here several months ago.
While the "safety" issue is, I think, overblown. I do know from personal experience that much of the offloaded design work that gets done gets significant rework when it gets in-house (not just from Russia, but local drafting/engineering houses as well). Not because people are incompetent, but because of a continuing unfamiliarity with boeing processes and requirements.
The primary issues many people have with the current management are:
1) focusing on "shareholder value" while losing focus and continually redefining what you are/do in order to keep short-term gains and profits at the expense of long term stability, real product development, and growth is a way to lose your core identity and possibly go out of business. cf. McDonnell Douglas
2) While offloading a certain amount of manufacturing and design makes sense - the more you do it, the more overhead you incur in contract negotiations and cost of change as you change the chain of red tape to engineer->buyer->vendor rep->vendor engineer->vendor production from just engineer->production increasing your overhead costs to offset any gains in efficiency or cost of final product.
3) offloading primary major structures design and risk, means offloading the value of that design and risk, means offloading the profits you get by taking that risk. Sharing risk = sharing profits, so you are trading near term costs and risks for fewer long term profits from sales of your product, because you HAVE to share the monies with those who shared your risk. Again - seemingly a result of focusing on short term "shareholder value" instead of long term company and product viablity. Not to mention that if you offload big enough chunks of it, you are lowering the barriers to entry for those suppliers and enabling potential competitors.
4) Losing product focus because of the insistence shareholder value means an unwillingness to take the risk to develop world changing products because of the significant risk. Boeing twice bet the company - 707 and 747 - because of a belief in a product. Not because of a focus on shareholder value. It would seem that Boeing now lacks the vision to do the same thing today.
All in all, the "short term pain for long term gain" philosophy seems to be spottily applied, at best.
BB
