Boeing says certain 787 parts improperly manufactured

It's difficult to overstate how gigantic that boom was in the aerospace field and how unique the industry it created in the US was.

So many aerospace related companies, all competing with each other, all continually improving the aircraft technology, engineering best practices, manufacturing practices, corporate structure and governance, and everything else associated with aircraft manufacture so they produced the best product.

The competition produced some incredible advances and some unique corporations (like Boeing was) that functioned in a way not before seen (and not presently continued) for an American corporation. Basically, an engineering firm that as sort of side business produced airplanes.

The problem was, of course, that the boom couldn't last - as other countries rebuilt their industries, the US was no longer the only game in town. For a long time, the US dominated aerospace because not only did this unique industry exist here but also because we had a huge head start.

Eventually, though, through mismanagement and delusions about why the US was in the lead, that lead was squandered, companies were sold out, consolidated, and markets shrank as regulation caused aircraft manufacturing to be a more specialized industry.

Boeing was one of the last firms that retained the focus on engineering from that post war boom time. Now that it's changed, to change it back would require a new generation of employees to make a conscious effort to do so, to replicate what happened during the post war boom.

That's nearly impossible.

>While I agree that Boeing should tell us which specific part it is,

In general, it's bad business etiquette to publicly name & shame defects/mistakes made by business partners or company employees. Whether a supplier messed up a titanium part or a Facebook employee misconfigured a router, you don't call out their names in public.

Yes, it's understandable we readers would want to know all the dirty details but Boeing giving us that may also have the opposite effect: less safety instead of more.

In this case, it was the supplier that notified Boeing about the defect. If Boeing publicly outed that supplier to the press, that adds perverse incentives for the supplier (and other suppliers) to not notify airplane manufacturers in the future which creates unsafe planes.

On the other hand, it's probably good if Boeing privately notifies the FAA inspectors so they are alerted to it. Maybe they already shared that information.

If they tell you that the some part will wear out 5% faster on the planes with out of spec parts then every two-bit who took an engineering class once upon a time will be writing medium posts and creating youtube analysis videos with clickbait titles that overblow things and make it look like the world is ending when in reality it just means that the plane operators will have to inspect the part more and the end of life operators will have to replace it more.

From the Pinto to the 737 MAX the lesson that the public has repeatedly taught corporate America is that when there is a problem the narrative matters more than reality and it is to their best advantage to control it as much as they possibly can and because there are big bucks at stake they learn the lesson and do just that.

We reap what we sow.