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Comment by prplhaz4 | Hacker News Reader

These are some massive sub-assemblies being carted all over the world...it's surprising to me that there aren't more localized efficiencies, or that this global Lego set doesn't always have more missing pieces than its worth.

    Rear Fuselage: Hamburg, Germany
    Vertical Stabilizer: Stade, Germany
    Forward Fuselage: Saint-Nazaire, France
    Wings: Broughton, Wales
    Engines: Middletown, Connecticuit
    Final Assembly: Mobile, Alabama

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The split is political. It can be quite inefficient: When the Airbus A380 was in development, the non-unified production caused severe delays because only at assembly did Airbus discover that the electric cables are not long enough to connect the different plane parts[1].

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/11/business/worldbusiness/11i...

I'm trying to remember where I read about Airbus designing the plane in two different places and when they built the thing it turned out that one place was using version X-1 and the other X and that caused really subtle problems with alignment.

I'm sure it was Airbus but I can't find the article.

EDIT: Found it http://calleam.com/WTPF/?p=4700

Offtopic but the "Catalogue of Catastrophe" is a damn good read http://calleam.com/WTPF/?page_id=3

Basically a "why things failed/cost a fortune that shouldn't" list for large projects.

It's like this due to political reasons, nothing to do with eficiency.

The article also cited the lower wages in Alabama. The pay scale tops out at $23 an hour, and the workforce is not unionized.

The $158m in incentives that Alabama paid were also part of it:

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2015/09/big_incentives_at_s...

As was the hope Airbus would land the Air Force tanker contract it lost to Boeing.

Surprisingly, there was a report a few years ago that the distributed nature of Airbus also was more efficient. But yeah, it's mainly for political reasons.

Pretty sure that report was for political reasons as well.

It was an independent report that compared Boeing and Airbus, so I have my doubts.

There hasn't been a professional sports stadium built, ever, without an "independent report" that said building a large concrete mausoleum employing mostly minimum wage workers for only part of the year, and with rich employees and owners that spirit most of their earnings out of state, wasn't the greatest economic benefit ever for their city.

But doesn't a business have to, at some point, meet a minimum level of efficiency to still be viable? Do subsidies and mandates make up for all that slack?

It's not just subsidies and mandates, it's large government contracts on maybe not actually needed systems. See the F-35 as an example of this, which has parts manufactured in a majority of states meaning it's impossible for congress to nix this sort of program because it would cost constituents jobs. Also how it makes it harder for congressmen and women to vote against these sorts of deals because it would cost their constituents future jobs.

I don't know about Airbus in particular but this is how it generally work with companies like Lockheed and Boeing.

Only if there's sufficient competition. Boeing does the same thing, spreading their components across most of the US (and into other countries) for the same reasons. It's an alternate to conventional lobbying. Instead of, "Hey Congressman here's $100,000 for your campaign." It's, "Hey Congressman, vote for aircraft X and I'll move to your state and create 2000 jobs. Don't, and I'll pull out the 2000 jobs that are already there."

This may be the minimum.

I would think that building planes, as expensive as they are, would mean that you would want to sell them to everyone. In order to sell in a country, you probably have to commit to building (or assembling) some parts of it in that country. Breaking it up the way they did probably is as efficient as they can make it now. I guess we'll see in some years how that turns out financially for them.

Did you read the article? It's as much if not more for economic reasons: Airbus realized that it could get more lucrative US military contracts by having local bases and chose factory locations partly for historical trends (of having facilities serving military-industrial complex) as well as other factors like lower cost and tax subsidies from choosen locations.

You probably need a decent amount of engineers at each of those locations. Different types of engineers. I doubt you can convince enough of them to move to Mobile. Plus at the end of the day, how much more does it cost to ship assembled pieces vs. raw material?

Alabama has a long history of space & aviation engineering... you wouldn't have to go far to find experienced engineers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Space_Flight_Center

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