In June 2006 I wrote a case study on Boeing and its 787 Dreamliner project. In short I noted that, “Faced with a decline in sales and market share, Boeing has revised how it does business in an effort to retake top spot in the competitive commercial aircraft industry. The company has found solutions to the inefficiencies of traditional manufacturing processes and a decentralized IT function and has relinquished what was once its core manufacturing competency. Boeing has used IT to transform a traditional collection of suppliers into a global network. These changes have been crucial to the development of the groundbreaking 787 Dreamliner aircraft, whose early sales and cost efficiencies augur a bright future for Boeing.” Mass collaboration was going to take Boeing to the top. And for the past year it looked as if those bright expectations were going to be fulfilled.

But over the past two months the Seattle-based company has faced increasing struggles to finalize delivery of the 787. The latest setback will see planes delivered in November or December of 2008, rather than May 2008 as promised. The company has blamed the delays on slow delivery of components from suppliers and shortages of raw materials.

Evidently this highlights the downside of giving a larger share of control of the 787 project to suppliers. But does it discredit the company’s collaborative solution? Not at all. Having saved billions in development and prototype costs, as well as the evident sales advantage over Airbus, Boeing will still be well served by its shared-risk, shared-reward strategy with its suppliers. Moreover, the lessons learned in this phase of the 787 project (though perhaps costly with late-penalties applied) will be integral for future collaborative ventures , not only for Boeing but throughout the manufacturing industry.