Hindsight has shown that in general too much of the 787 was outsourced. This management blunder caused tremendous integration problems and cost billions of dollars and many years of schedule delay.
However, the Boeing 787 Li-ion battery fires were not caused by outsourcing per se, and it would not make sense for Boeing (nor Airbus) to produce their own batteries, because the volume is too low and other companies are better at doing the job. I would even guess that insourcing would have increased the probability of a flawed design, all else being equal, because of Boeing’s lack of expertise in this specialty.
Insufficient qualification of the battery and its production system was partly to blame, given that the NTSB investigation report indicated that the supplier’s verification plan did not have a way to detect the type of defect that resulted in thermal runaway incidents. Boeing’s Supply Quality organization should have caught that.
early 2000s when the development began in earnest. Establishing deeper overseas supplier relationships for the 787 was a strategy to help improve these overall business relationships.
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I want to bring this point up because we need to be careful about using superficial analogies with other industries, because apparent similarities might be spurious and lead to learning a false lesson. These reasons and many more make Boeing’s make-buy decisions majorly different from Tesla’s.
Also, Tesla is using plenty of suppliers too, including for most of their battery cells. The question is whether vertical integration is applied where it makes sense and how well the company manages the supply chain for the rest.
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I agree with your post. My comment were based on my direct experience from attending the entire NTSB Hearings on the subject in 2013, attending on behalf a customer, I link to a Seattle comment not the entire transcript, there is copius detail publicly available:
My notes from that time showed the following:
- The public blame was focusses on GSYuasa, that made critical quality control and design failures, unknown to the prime contractor, Thales. Boeing knew nothing and ddi not check or exercise any supervision. These facts were discussed in the hearings but were heavily watered down in the reports. The basic errors were similar ones repeated with LG and others who did not monitor cell-level performance or QC. I write this now still astonished that these problems recur.
-A Tesla battery safety person also testified. She outlined the individual cell manufacturing quality control, culminating in every cell being individually tested and matched for pack quality. (FWIW, I was later told by one of the attendees that the Performance versions of Tesla had technically identical packs to non-Performance ones, but that the cells and other comononets of BMS were all more precisely matched. I never had any official confirmation of that.).
-Other Lithium Ion battery problems were presented there including ones with US Navy nuclear submarines. ALL of them involved subcontractors of prime contractors that were not supervised.
-Much of the structure came from the NTSB January 2013 report on the JAL fire (just search to that and you'll have it all)
-As the conference ended I asked a NTSB senior person privately why the NTSB did not recommend following the Tesla process, since that would have identified every bad cell and I implied that perhaps they did not want to offend the US Navy, Boeing and others. I repeat it was private. He told me they could recommend that but it would be rejected due to the dependency of all major users on what he called Prime contractors. he then said the NTSB has every bit of technical expertise they needed and that no 'tech startup' would ever be able to give them advice. No surprise, I was never around there again. My client was happy.
I am definitely not an expert on either cells, batteries, nor chemistry. I have had recurrent situations that have made me familiar with some Boeing issues, and those of several Tier One companies. My lack technical competence is these areas has made me cautious, and often astonished I've been asked to observe such subjects.
My conclusions on each of those efforts have been that the fundamental issues are always reduced to lack of management attention to technical detail, coupled with intense pressure to meet financial targets, so quality control suffers. That has been exacerbated by the political insistence that the FAA was to promote the industry, not regulate it. That makes me convinced that the GM and other problems with BEVs stem from similar lack of attention to core principles, disdain for new successful entrants and complacency.
My final point: It is not possible to have integrity with superficiality.
Following the end of those 2013 NTSB Hearings I was convinced Tesla would grow and thrive, but attract hatred and disdain. The only female there was the Tesla one. Then came Gwynne Shotwell. The bureaucrats from Boing and auto OEM's really never have had a clue.
