Less Hair Sums up the process that I saw begin in the mid 1980s, it emerged from the USA and spread to many English speaking countries - possible others too. I was working for an American company at the time, based in the UK with regular visits to HQ and saw what was coming down the track to us. In the UK, the big changes started with the recession of 90/92, after that the money men took over and the focus was away from the product and certainly from the staff.
One of the aspects of outsourcing that, I think, was not understood was this: The promise of outsourcing was that they would deal with all the problems and give you what you wanted. Some staff were transferred to the outsourced company and so their loyalty changed to all of their customers - not to you alone. Other staff, particularly seniors of course, often took the money and walked. More experience left the company. They thought they needed less managing of outsourcing. However, what I saw from the mid 90s onwards was that outsourcing needed to be MANAGED TIGHTLY. Because they now had many customers, it did not matter how important you were. You had screwed them down on price and so they had less to give you.
Boeing has simply hit the usual point of a mature company that was a fat cat and ripe for the picking. Airbus were the new kids on the block that were ignored but, as above, they steadily made their own road. Not least, they started with multiple productions sites and built it up. Boeing tried to do that with the 787 - which was ALSO a complicated new machine. To add to their problems, they were moving their production away - to save money and get subsidies. So they did (at least) three new things at once. That was not going to work out well.
The major problem for Boeing now is that, as this way of financial thinking has been around for 35+ years. This means that EVERYONE now in the system thinks that way. You cannot turn that around fast. It took some 20 years to get fully absorbed and will take at least 10 years to work through the system. That is, if Boeing make the right decisions now.
We have all heard the 'customer safety is our top priority' and variations from every sector of commerce. None of us believe that anymore. Just this week, I had to ring the bereavement department in a UK District Council. Automated phone answer and three levels of 'Press X' before I got to the department. They confirmed that I had to go through that sequence every time. Fantastic. When I worked in local government, we prided ourselves on answering the main phone number fast and dealing with the enormous range of enquiries with experienced and helpful humans.
There are other examples I (and all of us) can quote. When Coke-Cola decided to keep up with the kids and developed New Coke, they were fortunate that it was not at FL380 and they could bin the whole lot.