How suppliers´roles have changed at Boeing

Filed in archive Point of view on November 6, 2007

Steven Schaffer, vice president of global partners at Boeing Commercial Airplanes, was selected couple of weeks ago as the supply chain manager of the year by Purchasing Magazine. One of the reasons for this choice was his revolutionary plan to change the role of the suppliers for boeing components. In another post I am going to write in detail what are the main lines of change in his plan but as an overview I can refer to such aspects:




Before, Boeing used to design the whole plane and supplier were just making the components (around 60%) but now, specially for the DreamLiner project, supplier make up to 70% of the airplane. They also design the parts and subsystems. The testing and verifying the subsystems have also been outsourced to the suppliers. The new system also has put an emphasis on collaboration between suppliers to decrease the number of BUGS! in assembly.

The new system has some great benefits for sure. But I am a bit concerned about the dark-side of the plan. As a summary, these are the things which are bothering me:

- Right now in computer industry, PC makers are suffering the problem of Intel Inside! (most of the profit goes to the Intel rather than HP for example). Will Boeing plan lead to such issue?

- Will this plan lead to loss of Boeing´s edge in the long-term (what will be the company´s competency in the future and how will it be protected)?

- How the challenge of quality improvement will be handled with suppliers which are designing the parts now?

What do you think?