Boeing learns outsourcing lesson on 787

[jollyreaper]

Remember that Japan used to be a joke in the early 20th century. Japanese-made was synonymous with cheap worthless crap. Nobody took their manufacturing seriously. Even with winning the Russo-Japanese War, they were still underestimated as little yellow monkeys right up until WWII started. Then again, they thought the west was filled with soft, effete cowards who would cringe away and surrender at the first sign of true yamato dashi. You really have to accuse both sides of some severely pig-ignorant racism.

The Chinese are only going to get better at this stuff.

[xthetenth]

Umm, their manufacturing was still kinda crap. Their shipbuilding was decent, but their armor plate wasn't drastically better than WWI British, and they had a large number of failures of designs to work to spec, including the Yamato being fatally damaged by torpedoes that shouldn't have penetrated the torpedo defense system as designed. The Zero had an anemic engine that never got much better, weak cannon that couldn't be much stronger or they'd warp the structure, and generally had no room for growth. The long lance, while impressive, was a massive effort and the manufacturing for it really shouldn't be mentioned in polite company. These are products they are doing their level best to make up to a high standard. They were still trying to claw themselves up to the same standard as second rate powers, and had only really gotten there very recently, so it's not too much of a shock to see that the west was surprised by what the Japanese managed on their limited tech base. Sometimes reputations for poor quality are earned, and once the Japanese really got the high tech going, they lost that reputation pretty quick. It's relatively easy to shake a reputation for qualities that aren't evident in products used every day.

[MKSheppard]

xtenth, there are so many things wrong with your statement that to list them all would take quite a while, and I'm doing this from a laptop in a laundry room.

Suffice to say, the Japanese had a very high technical and qualitative base -- they managed to reverse engineer a Jumo 004B from a photograph after the technical drawings were lost on a U Boat enroute to Japan.

They also produced various numbers of follow on aircraft besides the Zero -- some of which could stand up quite well to the hellcat/corsair/mustang spam. The problem was their limited manufacturing base and raw materials shortages that just kept them from producing them in large quantities.

[jollyreaper]

They also couldn't keep up with the rate of advance. The Zero was a world-beater at the beginning of the war but obsolete by the end. Historians argue as to whether they were outproduced or outfought to decide the war. Some point out that the Allies had effectively defeated them even before the manufacturing base had ramped up to full steam. But by the late war they were outproduced by a completely ludicrous amount.

It was a really dumb war to start and naysayers on their own side said it would be the industrial differences that would doom them. The pro-war side said that they would have the war won before the industrial imbalance was felt and the Americans lacked the stomach for long war. Oops and oops.

[xthetenth]

xtenth, there are so many things wrong with your statement that to list them all would take quite a while, and I'm doing this from a laptop in a laundry room.

Suffice to say, the Japanese had a very high technical and qualitative base -- they managed to reverse engineer a Jumo 004B from a photograph after the technical drawings were lost on a U Boat enroute to Japan.

They also produced various numbers of follow on aircraft besides the Zero -- some of which could stand up quite well to the hellcat/corsair/mustang spam. The problem was their limited manufacturing base and raw materials shortages that just kept them from producing them in large quantities.

They did get some seriously nice designs out, but I wasn't really considering their more advanced and very limited products for the purposes of discussing the overall level of their manufacturing base's advancement. I was also really focusing on prewar. If you can give me examples of things that hit large-scale production on that high a level especially prewar, I'll back down immediately. I'm probably taking it too far to say that even their most advanced industries weren't really up to very high standards, because they were really advancing at a rapid pace and generally doing a hell of a job getting some quite sophisticated stuff at the top end especially as time went on, but that level of sophistication didn't seem to have spread to all the other industries. However, prewar, their level of overall industrial sophistication didn't seem to be quite there, and that was what I was trying to say in many (relatively poorly thought out) words. I have a general impression that the Japanese were capable of quite impressive stuff, but they didn't have the widespread industrial technology and stuff to really make it on a large scale, so even if they had some really good stuff and were catching up, the overall level wasn't great, and so the mass-produced stuff on the lower end wasn't likely to be of top-notch quality, with the occasional failure to execute really top-level stuff properly. Is that incorrect?

[Broomstick]

Remember that Japan used to be a joke in the early 20th century. Japanese-made was synonymous with cheap worthless crap. Nobody took their manufacturing seriously. Even with winning the Russo-Japanese War, they were still underestimated as little yellow monkeys right up until WWII started. Then again, they thought the west was filled with soft, effete cowards who would cringe away and surrender at the first sign of true yamato dashi. You really have to accuse both sides of some severely pig-ignorant racism.

The Chinese are only going to get better at this stuff.

The Chinese can get better, only time will tell if they WILL get better. Right now their manufacturing can't be trusted with anything critical because of recent fuck-ups that maimed and killed people. I have no doubt that the Chinese are capable of doing better... in fact they could be doing better right now but they aren't. That's why I said there would have to be some changes in fundamental attitudes and business practices before they gain a reputation for quality rather than cheap or quantity.

You see, even when the Japanese were technologically inferior they still had an attitude that valued excellence. If you look you can see that all through their culture. No matter what condition your resources or how few you had you did the best you could with them. In retrospect it's not surprising that when they finally regained the ground they lost in WWII they started putting out some really fine things.

Now, in the past the Chinese produced some very fine things (silk of all sorts, for example, tea, ceramics, paper...) however, they are not doing that now in some areas, even though they could. Even if in some areas they don't have the tech quality control and precision tools ARE available on the open market these days. I'm sure there are Chinese firms that do make the effort. Hell, they have put people in space and successfully brought them back, and you can't do that and also be a slacker, that demonstrates they are able to produce quality. On the other hand, they've produced some seriously fucked up goods - tainted toothpaste, pet food, dry wall... not to mention the internal scandal of bad baby formula. The only reason that formula was contaminated with a potentially deadly chemical was to cheat the tests that check milk quality, in other words, it was deliberate fraud. That's way different than "sorry, our factory tools aren't as precise as yours". Getting better tools is a fairly straightforward fix, the attitudes that lead to adulterating goods are a people problem, though, and can be much harder to fix.Not only that, these companies did it to their own countrymen (not that it's OK to sell poison to foreigners, but if you don't care about your own you sure as hell won't care about anyone else). Until the attitudes that this sort of adulteration is an acceptable risk are eliminated no, the Chinese will never have a reputation for quality and others will not want to trust them with critical systems and items.

I agree with jollyreaper that the zero was top notch when it was first built - aviation advanced so fast during the war that by the end everyone's airplanes they'd started with were obsolete. But there's more to a fighter than just raw power. The zero was highly maneuverable and had a long range, longer than any other carrier-based fighter of the time. Early in the war it had a ridiculously high kill ratio, something like 10 or 12 to 1. It wasn't until others developed more powerful engines that allowed more armor at the same speed and near equal maneuverability that the zero lost ground, and that's just the normal technological advance of war. That, and the opposition learned to not even try to out turn a zero. In addition, during the initial phases of the war Japan's pilots were highly trained and very skilled (that whole "do the best job you can thing", I suspect). A world-class airplane with a world-class pilot accounted for the large initial kill ratio. By the end of the war, though, Japan was running short on everything - pilots, engines, fuel.... so of course performance suffered.

[jollyreaper]

Yeah, I know how crap Chinese products are now. I'm just concerned about the future. The thing that I'm paying attention to is their crap isn't just for export. The quick buck capitalism idea extends to ripping off their own people. So while they may go on to make the 21st century be the Chinese century and become the next superpower, there's also the chance that they've sewn the seeds of their own destruction. I'm betting a shiny nickel on the Three Gorges dam collapsing due to shoddy construction and a quake in the next hundred years. May or may not happen but I won't be surprised either way.

Back in the early 90's it looked like Japan was going to eat the world's lunch but they ended up overextending and have been in economic doldrums ever since. Of course, the US has been busy shooting itself in the foot and I think our century is over and gone. I see us as already far down the slide that will leave us like post-empire Britain. Which is better than post-empire Rome, of course. That was ugly.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

What the Chinese cannot do through excellence, they do so through mass spam production.

[Simon_Jester]

The plant was like something out of the 1960s or 1970s, and I mean that. Some of the wing jig/clamp/holders had manufacturing tags from about 1976/1977.

Apparently you are unfamiliar with the approval process for airplane construction in the US. Updating those tools would likely require re-approving from the get-go as if they were entirely new designs. This would greatly add to the cost of small general aviation airplanes, with questionable added value. Cessna bothered to do that with the new line of C172's, which now easily cost a fifth to a quarter million new. Compare that to some of their 50 year old C172's which are still flying just fine and can be purchased for $50,000 or even less. There are times when it's not cost-effective to update an item simply for the sake of updating. Airplanes are [not] cars. They last longer, among other things.

There are, however, problems with this kind of production. If China (or, perhaps more likely, an Eastern European or Latin American country) put together a factory to compete with Piper's using modern machine tools... the machining would be done more efficiently because of the better tools and the cost of all those man-hours of labor would be lower.

It might be all too easy for an overseas competitor to put Piper and their factory out of business then, if they can get set up to do so. This isn't something that can be done by hordes of unskilled workers adhering to unreliable business practices on antediluvian machine tools, I know... but not all Third World industry operates on those standards of performance. Just the stuff you think of if the words "Made in China" mean children's toys and not, say, fighter jets.

xtenth, there are so many things wrong with your statement that to list them all would take quite a while, and I'm doing this from a laptop in a laundry room.

Suffice to say, the Japanese had a very high technical and qualitative base -- they managed to reverse engineer a Jumo 004B from a photograph after the technical drawings were lost on a U Boat enroute to Japan.

They also produced various numbers of follow on aircraft besides the Zero -- some of which could stand up quite well to the hellcat/corsair/mustang spam. The problem was their limited manufacturing base and raw materials shortages that just kept them from producing them in large quantities.

Shep, how much of this was due to a uniformly high grade industrial base?

One thing I'd expect to see in 'second rate' economies is a small core of modern or near-modern industry that can match the more advanced nations, combined with a much larger body of lighter, lower-quality industry that can't... and tries to make up for the lack of quality by large scale production. You might see wildly different levels of quality between the Tokyo Wonky Prototype Factory (which has the best engineers in the country and can afford to spend three times as many man-hours per part trying to get everything right to within the necessary tolerances) and the Generic Provincial Aviation Plant (which is being used for series production of an existing design and can't afford to let the best be the enemy of the good enough).

[Broomstick]

The plant was like something out of the 1960s or 1970s, and I mean that. Some of the wing jig/clamp/holders had manufacturing tags from about 1976/1977.

Apparently you are unfamiliar with the approval process for airplane construction in the US. Updating those tools would likely require re-approving from the get-go as if they were entirely new designs. This would greatly add to the cost of small general aviation airplanes, with questionable added value. Cessna bothered to do that with the new line of C172's, which now easily cost a fifth to a quarter million new. Compare that to some of their 50 year old C172's which are still flying just fine and can be purchased for $50,000 or even less. There are times when it's not cost-effective to update an item simply for the sake of updating. Airplanes are [not] cars. They last longer, among other things.

There are, however, problems with this kind of production. If China (or, perhaps more likely, an Eastern European or Latin American country) put together a factory to compete with Piper's using modern machine tools... the machining would be done more efficiently because of the better tools and the cost of all those man-hours of labor would be lower.

That would be the case if it were simply a matter of manufacturing those new airplanes but to get them registered in the US requires the FAA to approve the design (This is actually a common practice globally). So while a Chinese SinoPiper could transit US airspace legally with a Chinese tail number and paperwork someone purchasing and basing the airplane in the US faces slightly different obstacles. If the FAA is OK with the model it's not a big deal - I've flown a couple of airplanes manufactured abroad and registered as US airplanes under the usual general aviation regulations and it's no big deal. However, if the FAA is not confident about the safety of the design you will, at best, need to get each and every individual airplane of that type approved, and approval will be under a restricted category such as an experimental or air show grouping. Again, I have flown such airplanes, it's not an insurmountable obstacle, but it will increase the expense and will decrease the utility of such aircraft.

IF the Chinese can truly produce a cheap Piper knockoff of equal or greater quality to what comes out of North America or Europe more power to them. The world can always use a less expensive high quality airplane. However, the fact that until recently they didn't really have any form of general aviation would be a handicap. Naturally, the Chinese are just as smart as anyone else, and they are just as capable of great engineering feats, but they lack experience in that area of aviation. My local flight school is teaching batches of Chinese pilots because China doesn't have the capacity it needs to train the civilian pilots now required by their economy (really, it's a win-win because we need the business locally, and the Chinese pilots can train in high traffic airspace and practice their English skills, which will be extremely useful for any who fly international routes in the future). If the Chinese government decided they were going to replicate Piper to comparable (or even better) quality I have absolutely no doubt it would happen, and rapidly. However, production of general aviation airplanes is not a priority for the Chinese government. That leaves entrepreneurial start ups. How open to such enterprises is China at this point? How many highly skilled engineers and skilled tradesmen are available and willing to take a chance with such an enterprise, rather than getting jobs with more established and less risky firms?

As I've said, the obstacles here aren't technological, they're cultural/social.

Piper also has pretty good market penetration and some brand loyalty (I know Piper pilots who wear T-shirts saying things like "Friends don't let friends fly Cessnas" and the like), which is another people-generated obstacle.

On the other hand, Piper has in the past been its own worst enemy at times. The first time it went bankrupt was in 1930. I've lost track of how many incarnations the company has had, but it's been at least a half a dozen. The jigs and tooling Shep saw dates from the mid-1970's because in 1972 a large portion of the original tooling was destroyed in a flood and had to be rebuilt, and at that point the company decided to not recreate tooling for the Comanche as they did not thought they could recoup the cost of doing so by selling sufficient Comanches in any reasonable time frame - which means getting parts for Comanches can be problematic at times. Piper is currently running a reduced work week and laying people off because they have more airplanes in inventory than they can sell right now. They're struggling, so it wouldn't take much to push them over the edge.

Despite that, it's Piper that's planning to move into Asia, not an Asian firm planning to move into the US market. They've entered into a partnership with Honda to produce a small jet, and a few years ago most of the company voting stock (over 90%) was purchased by a Singapore based company. Interestingly, both the Singapore investors and Honda want production of Piper products to remain in Florida. Hmm.... It could be as simple as the expertise to build small general aviation aircraft is in Florida and not Asia right now.

I'd think it would be more likely China would buy an already existing general aviation airplane factory that try to start one from the ground up. They could simply copy the US or European tooling, set up factories in the China, and start cranking out airframes for their own needs, while retaining the original company with it's certified-for-North-America-and-Europe models for overseas production. If Piper goes down the financial toilet (again) and becomes available for purchase an Asia country could buy it at firesale prices and use it to start their own small airplane industry.

[mr friendly guy]

If the Chinese government decided they were going to replicate Piper to comparable (or even better) quality I have absolutely no doubt it would happen, and rapidly. However, production of general aviation airplanes is not a priority for the Chinese government.

wiki because I am lazy and have to work soon

This Chinese government-owned corporation will specifically try to design and attempt to build large passenger aircraft with a capacity of over 150 passengers to reduce the country's dependency on Boeing and Airbus

I remember when I was in university reading about Jiang Zheming exhorting the Chinese industry to move into more higher tech stuff than the mass cheap stuff they are currently producing, along with plans to send a man into space. Years later at least we know they put their money where their mouth is.

Those of us who keep an eye out on economic news emanating from China have been aware for some time China's government wants to create a national aerospace manufacturer for some time. *

I'd think it would be more likely China would buy an already existing general aviation airplane factory that try to start one from the ground up. They could simply copy the US or European tooling, set up factories in the China, and start cranking out airframes for their own needs, while retaining the original company with it's certified-for-North-America-and-Europe models for overseas production. If Piper goes down the financial toilet (again) and becomes available for purchase an Asia country could buy it at firesale prices and use it to start their own small airplane industry.

This plane has already has its test flight. No need to take over an existing company. From what I remember from other sources, its designed for domestic routes (most of China's planes fly domestic, so it makes sense to start off smaller).
This civillian plane is in the works, and Shep has already gone orgasmic over how he could turn it into military applications in another thread. IIRC supposed to compete with Boeing and Airbus big planes. Initially they plan to buy foreign engines (what, China outsources as well. Who would of thunk that. ). Again with outsourcing the idea is to build the overall product cheaper, and if they succeed even with the foreign engines then it will be competitive provided it meets all the required safety standards.


* I keep an eye out for economic news from China because it interests me and I believe it will give me an edge when I trade stocks given how exposed our market is to China.

[Broomstick]

Mr Friendly Guy, I think you misunderstand. The vast majority of Piper aircraft products are 4 to 6 seat general aviation aircraft. They are NOT passenger jets, they're small airplanes, the airborne equivalent of sedans or vans.

Even the jet Piper is collaborating on with Honda will only carry 6 people if I recall correctly.

If someone is talking about China putting Piper out of business via competition they aren't discussing jets and airliners. Although airliners and Piper Cubs are both civilian aviation they are two very different categories of civilian aviation. Yes, China builds airliners. It does not build Piper Cherokees.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Since the A6M series fighters were brought up, I think it's time to clear up some things about them. This is tangential to the original topic and moderators please move it to a more appropriate forum, if necessary.

This post may contain milwank and glass canopies.

Firstly, design of weapons and weapon systems usually reflect the established doctrine and tactics. The Japanese military in WW2 is a quite good example of that, because many of their tactical doctrines were more or less different from Western powers. The A6M "Zero" is a good example. Like its immediate predecessor, the A5M Claude, and the Japanese army equivalents (the Ki. 43 and Ki. 27, respectively), it was designed as the ultimate WW1 fighter aircraft. Some concessions to modernity were made; it was a monoplane with a retractable landing gear after all. Range was also an important design goal, which was somewhat in contrast to the extreme maneuverability idea, but was needed in a carrier fighter. Interestingly, though, most sources agree that the Ki. 43, which did not have the same range requirements, was even more maneuverable than the Zero.

Tactically, if we ignore the range issue for the moment, the Zero was far from being the best fighter in the world in 1941, let alone in 1942. The best European fighters, namely the Bf 109F and Fw 190A were clearly superior, especially with the standard German fighter tactics employed. The fast German fighters could have engaged and disengaged the Zero at will using their high speed and energy conserving tactics. There was nothing the Zero could do to counter them apart from some difficult high deflection shots aimed at rapidly distancing targets. Well, of course if the German pilots got stupid and tried to turn with the Zero, the situation would be vastly different.

Basically the Zero would have been only somewhat better against the German fighters as the Polikarpov I-16 and I-153 were in the Eastern front, since they were designed around similar tactics as the Zero. The Zero was faster, but on the other hand it did not have any armor unlike the Soviet fighters. It is notable the a fair number of Bf 109Fs got shot down by I-16s because novice pilots tried to turn with them and the Soviet pilot happened to be some of the better ones; in some cases they had even fought against the Japanese flying the Ki. 27 during the border wars.

Another case in point: by mid-1942 the 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG), also known as the Flying Tigers, had already developed tactics to counter the Japanese Army Ki. 27 and Ki. 43 with their P-40 fighters. The P-40 models they were flying were in most respects inferior to the Bf 109F and Fw 190A (and the Spitfire Mk. V), but nevertheless with the proper tactics they could hold their own against the super-maneuverable Japanese machines. Later during the Pacific War such USN fighters as the F4F-4 and FM-1 Wildcats were also shown to be a fairly good match for the Zero once right tactics (including but not limited to the Thach Weave) were developed. By European land based standards the Wildcat was a decidedly underwhelming fighter even in 1942, which was kept in service until 1945 only because it could operate from the small Escort Carriers.

So why was the Zero such a success initially? Pilot quality certainly played a major role, but even more importantly the US fighter pilots and aviators were using tactics which did not fully utilize the strengths of the US fighters, but suited the Japanese excellently. Still, the Japanese paid a high price for the maneuverability and exceptional range of the Zero. Its light construction, lack of armor and self-sealing fuel tanks was a direct contributor to the high pilot losses the Japanese Navy suffered in 1942 and 1943. And once those top notch pilots were gone they could never be replaced.

Like others have already written, the Zero had a very modest development potential, in particular when compared to the Bf 109, Spitfire or even the P-39 (which eventually became the excellent P-63). Adding more engine power gave only slightly more speed and the problems with extremely stiff controls at high speeds were never resolved. Armor was added, but even with that it was less robust than US fighters. The armament did get better after all; the Type 99-2 20 mm cannon had a 25% higher muzzle velocity than the earlier Type 99-1 but only slightly lower rate of fire, which made it more useful for engaging enemy fighters. Later models even replaced the 7.7 mm peashooters which much more useful 13.2 mm heavy machine guns.

[MKSheppard]

I remember when I was in university reading about Jiang Zheming exhorting the Chinese industry to move into more higher tech stuff than the mass cheap stuff they are currently producing, along with plans to send a man into space. Years later at least we know they put their money where their mouth is.

CPD

Motorola Solutions Inc can't disclose to Nokia Siemens Networks trade secrets of Huawei Technologies Co, China's biggest maker of telecommunications network equipment, a US judge said.

Motorola Solutions is selling its wireless network infrastructure business, which incorporates Huawei technology, to a joint venture of Finland's Nokia Oyj and Munich-based Siemens AG for $1.2 billion.

Motorola and its corporate predecessor have been reselling licensed Huawei products under its own name since a June 2000 accord.

US District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman in Chicago on Thursday also ordered the Shenzhen, China-based company to post a $500,000 bond to indemnify Motorola and Nokia if they were wrongly enjoined. The Huawei-Motorola dispute is scheduled to go before an arbitration tribunal in Geneva.

"The court concludes that Huawei is likely to suffer irreparable harm if, without Huawei's consent and prior to arbitration, Motorola provides NSN with Huawei confidential information," Coleman said in her ruling.

Huawei provided Motorola Solutions, one of two offshoots of Schaumburg, Illinois-based Motorola Inc, with confidential information to allow Motorola to provide vendor-level support and services to its customers using Huawei equipment.

"NSN will need the Huawei confidential information to provide the newly acquired Motorola customers with the same level of vendor support, service and maintenance that Motorola provided," Coleman said.

Motorola had told the judge that Huawei's rights hadn't been violated and wouldn't be.

"Motorola Solutions has not made any unauthorized disclosures of Huawei confidential information, nor will it," the company said in a Feb 9 court filing.

"As we stated in court, Motorola Solutions respects, and will continue to protect, Huawei's confidential information as per the agreements that we have with Huawei," Nick Sweers, a Motorola Solutions spokesman, said in a statement.

"We still plan to pursue the final transaction approval with Chinese regulatory authorities."

Motorola Solutions plans to close the transaction this quarter, Sweers said.

Nokia Siemens has "no interest in getting unlawful access to Huawei's trade secrets", the company said in a statement.

Nokia Siemens's motivation for the acquisition is to expand its presence in the United States and Japan, the company said.

Bill Plummer, a spokesman for Huawei, called Nokia Siemens "a significant competitor" and said in a phone interview that disclosure of Huawei's intellectual property to the joint venture wasn't acceptable and "would do grievous harm".

"We are certainly pleased that the court is recognizing the merits of our claim," Plummer said.

This is the beginning of the end of the 'Chinese produce cheap crap' meme; when a US judge rules in favor of a Chinese manufacturer's IP rights.