I’m putting my money on option B as well.
Obviously the project is a failure from a project management standpoint (success being defined as on scope, on time, and on budget).
It will be extremely difficult -if not impossible- to compare with what would have been a less collaborative approach.

Actually, even if it was determined that failure is partially to be blamed on collaboration, that wouldn’t mean much as it relates to the value of collaboration.
Who ever got it right at the first shot?

If the problem is a supply problem, it would not have mattered which system you used. Suppliers will not inform their customer’s that they cannot deliver until it is to late. It is human nature.

I would think that using a more collaborative method of manufacturing is the better model.

With more stakeholders, you have a better quality control.

To what extent do the 787 partners practice transparency and joint modelling?

Are they explicitly sharing of information, where the process of sharing information is an explicit step that parties have to make, and each sharing is preceded by a decision or commitment or culture to share that information? It can take huge effort to throw information, especially bad news, over the wall. And it is human nature to share only the good news and hide bad news, especially when the reasons for a problem are poorly understood.

Do they have joined-up processes that span organizations and permit transparent viewing of process-level information?

I know the saying goes, if you want to be naked you better be buff, so I’m wondering to what extent they practice transparency, and just how automated is the linkage of their planning models.

Martin Cleaver.

In light of the recent news that Boeing will actually make major changes to their supply chain and reverse their design & production model and bring much of the work in-house, what are your thoughts on this topic now?

Business Week article, Jan 16th 2009:
http://bit.ly/t2ZC

I am still a supporter of the mass collaboration principle but I can also see that as you increase the extent of your supply chain and outsource more and more of the design and production, that will naturally lead to a greater risk of miscommunication and misunderstanding, mistakes and hence delays. Delay in such a industry is no doubt costly and does not look good on the balance sheet. No one can say with any cetainty that a different model would have been better or more effective.

I think that there is a definite opportunity from the Dreamliner project to learn from mistakes, enhance and tighten up processes and procedures and apply those lessons in future variants of the aircraft.

Boeing is not an ordinary company. It was funded by R&D that was essentially a gift and part of industrial policy, or corporate welfare — depending upon how you want to look at it. They received a steady supply of defense related subsidies from WW2 and up to the present time. Through engaging in this collaboration and global outsourcing, it also gave away previous taxpayer money so that it could bring the price down and “lower risk.” In terms of “lowering risk” building airplanes is what Boeing does. If it does not want to do that, which it is done for decades, then I am confused as to its value add. Designing and building airplanes was its core competency. If it wants to screw together and paint airplane components made in other countries in order to increase its profits, that is simple lazyness. Furthermore, this reduces US employment and I question its motives. Is this entire gamit so that Boeing executives can have more money, extra yatchs and summer homes in Europe while the manufacturing worker gets laid off? It seems that “collaboration” or “outsourcing” is now an ideology that people support, no matter how bad the outcome.

This is just a simple case of management stupidity trusting outsourcing “gurus” from McKinsey about great benefits of outsourcing. McKinsey has been known to advocate outsourcing (mainly to India) while the firm itself knows nothing about operations. First rule – NEVER outsource the core competency was conveniently ignored. It is almost as someone decided to minimize the cost of manufacturing by running hige production lots without realizing that this will double a total supply chain cost. Boeing management was happy to get their bonuses for reducing their overhead and labor cost (by laying off thousands of workers) and now eats the results of its action (the decision makers ought to be fired at once). This is a typical example of an idea taken to the extreme without understanding what this would entail (another example is idea of KIT in the 90th when everyone ran out of stock). I wonder what these outsourcing “gurus” are saying now:)

They are probably not saying anything Toly. These trends come and go in consulting and there is very little accountability. When their advice flames out, they just jump to the next trend. Right now one trend is “lean,” which is also horribly misapplied, and is sort of like JIT 2.0. When that as failed, they will try something else.