Boeing doesn’t seem to be going into much detail about the "parts
shortages" which have delayed the rollout of its new 787 Dreamliner
by six months. But Jeff Matthews talked
to a Boeing supplier a couple of weeks ago, who said that the 787 presented
to the world on July 8 was put together, in places, with “fasteners from
Wal-Mart.”
I don’t think the supplier was talking metaphorically: as long ago as May 24
I was wondering
whether a fastener shortage might hit
the 787’s production schedule. These little things can make a huge difference,
even if they’re, um, expected. Matthews picks up a fanatastic quote
from a Boeing executive which is positively Rumsfeldian:
As we’ve experienced in the last couple of months, we are not experiencing
things we didn’t think we would experience. We’re just experiencing
slower resolution of what we thought we would find.
Translation: We knew there were fastener shortages. We just didn’t get realistic
about how long they were likely to last.