Boeing has not been put off using international partners by its experience with the delayed Dreamliner

Boeing has not been put off using international partners by its experience with the delayed Dreamliner programme, according to the company’s chairman and CEO. Boeing’s strategy on the 787 – of outsourcing an unprecedented amount of manufacturing to partners in Japan, Italy and the US – has provided the group with valuable lessons for its next new jet project, Jim McNerney says. “In a couple of cases, we gave our partners a little more work than they could handle effectively, and we are going to learn from that,” Mr McNerney assured. The next time that Boeing develops a new plane, “It may be a different blend of inside and outside work, but the fundamental strategy would be the same,” he suggests. Acknowledging the setbacks that have pushed the Dreamliner programme 15 months behind schedule, Jim McNerney points out that “game-changing innovation” of the type used on Boeing’s new jet, and subsequently investigated by Airbus for its competing A350, is “never easy”. Seattle Post Intelligencer (06/05)