Boeing machinists are on strike after the union and Boeing management were unable to come to terms while renegotiating a three year contract.  

The disagreement between union and corporate is nothing new, the issues are similar to those seen with other unions; wages and health care costs.

But there’s more to the strike than that. Nowadays most union workers are demanding job security besides wages and benefits.  Boeing union wants the same but Boeing, like other companies across the US, wants flexibility to outsource work and that is the root cause of the strike by Boeing machinists. 
 
But wait, Boeing does have the flexibility to outsource work and has been doing so for the past few years. 
 
But outsourcing comes with it’s pains and Boeing is facing the two most common problems faced by most companies who outsource; project delay and lack of quality or completeness of project.

Boeing’s 787 program, building a fuel-efficient jet was supposed to be primarily built offshore by suppliers in Japan, Italy, and elsewhere. These suppliers were to do most of the work and Boeing was only going to do the final assembly of these planes in house.
 
But unfortunately for Boeing, the 787 program is more than a year behind schedule, the first few planes arrived with missing pieces, and the union had to be tapped on to help put these planes together.

But what I don’t understand is how this can happen? How can a company outsourcing work worth hundreds of millions of dollars not have a good handle on managing their offshore suppliers? 
 
Don’t these people follow project management practices? Doesn’t a company like Boeing have a full-time staff that is monitoring and managing the program?  Don’t they have project schedules and escalation procedures to understand and help put the project back on track?
 
But Boeing’s story is not new.  In outsourcing, we all know that delays do happen. Scope changes, cultural issues, communication issues, and sometimes suppliers biting off more than they can chew are all reasons for why delays happen.
 
But if I were Boeing’s management team, I’d ask the onshore team managing the offshore suppliers to explain why these delays have happened and how can planes arrive with missing parts.  
 
This is where I feel that companies outsourcing work miss the boat. They outsource work thinking of the immediate labor cost, better skills, or faster throughput advantages. What they don’t understand is that besides an oversight team made up of people who know how to run a program of this nature, they need offshore experts who know that particular country’s culture and languages.  These experts can help a company and it’s people navigate through the cultural, communication, and other issues that cause delays and poor quality work output.

Coming back to Boeing, I hope that they are able to reach a settlement with their union soon. They are already more than a year late and the sooner they settle with their union, the sooner they can get planes ready for the 900 or so orders they’ve already received from customers wanting that 787 fuel-efficient jet.