This is part of it. Its also part of the reason why Airbus/EADS quite successfully builds bits of aircraft all over Europe (and even proposed expansions of operations in Alabama as part of their bid for USAF tankers)

Also, it may surprise the article author to learn that there are outside specialists who have capabilities that Boeing couldn't effortlessly replicate in Seattle. Italy and Sweden certainly don't have low labour costs and they don't have much of a domestic market for long range airliners either.

Ultimately Boeing's logistical cockups have more to do with the overall ambition and complexity of the project than cost cutting.

Airbus's distributed manufacturing is more about pork-barrel politics, it's spread around the countries that own shares in the airbus consortium

Ironically Several of the components of the 7e7 are made in europe by Airbus suppliers. The undercarriage, tail and bits of the fuselage are made in the same plants that are building them for airbus.

AFAIK the only certified engines at launch are Rolls-Royce

Mitsubishi, Kawasaki and Fuji Heavy Industries in Japan are building several of the components for the 787 and All Nippon Airways is to be the first airline to receive a 787.

http://www.seattlepi.com/business/275465_japan27.html

There were issues with where the wing meets the body (both parts built in Japan), but the responsibility supposedly lies with Boeing who designed the parts.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/boeingaerospace/200956...

Japanese and Korean suppliers are working to ramp up production of parts.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-01/boeing-787-supplier...

Yea, that's what I've heard as well. I think India for example basically told Boeing and Airbus, "we're buying from whoever creates the most local jobs for us". So it has nothing to do with outsourcing to save money, and everything to do with outsourcing to close sales.

It's the Aerospace industrial complex! Only instead of representatives and US states, it's corporate boards and other nations.

Work share deals are just part of getting contracts signed for items at this price point. Given the resulting cost and schedule overruns, and that Boeing has not pulled everything back in-house (yet?), we may want to rethink the degree to which these agreements were secondary motivators for outsourcing...the cost of efficient breach in terms of damages to suppliers and lost sales would have to be greater still than eating the current and projected overruns.

I was thinking the same thing, then I remembered a fiction story I read about an airliner "outsourcing the wing" (Airframe, Michael Crichton), so now I'm wondering if I had that impression from the fiction, or if I read it in a real-world story about the Dreamliner.