Snap goes deadline at Boeing

Over the years the culture of Boeing has taken many turns. Pioneering. Lazy. Bold. Bloated.

Through it all, there was another quality that mattered just as much: punctuality. "There's pride about being the on-time company," says Bob Bogash, a retired quality-assurance director. "We used to say: 'If you go over budget, they'll be mad. If you blow the schedule, you're fired.' "

So it was an especially big deal when Boeing execs announced last week that their new "plastic plane," the 787 Dreamliner, had overslept. It's the Lateliner instead.

A six-month delay might draw a shrug in government. Or in the software industry. But at Boeing, it's the worst delay to a jet program since they began building jets 55 years ago.

The last new jet, the 777, rolled out on time to the day.

Tom Wroblewski thinks he knows what's changed.

"It's because we're not building this plane at Boeing," he says. "If we were building it, I guarantee you it wouldn't be late. We certainly proved that much over all those years."

Wroblewski joined Boeing in 1978, as an inspector in fabrication. He's the new president of the local Machinists union. The more Boeing outsources its work, the fewer jobs there will be for Seattle-area machinists. So on this issue he's as biased as they come.

He may also have a point.

The Dreamliner is famously not from here. To cut costs and share risk, Boeing had the wings made in Japan, the fuselage in Italy and South Carolina, the nose in Kansas, the rudder in China, the doors in France.

It's to be flown here in big chunks, prewired, assembled, riveted. All they're supposed to do in Everett is snap it together. In three days.

It will be a glory of globalization if it works. A confirmation that the world really is flat, to steal from Thomas Friedman's book of that name. Anything now can be done anywhere. Technology and mobility have leveled the planetary playing field.

Or maybe you still get what you pay for, Wroblewski says. And if you want it done right, you do it yourself.

Parts of the plane are being reworked here because the suppliers botched them, he says. Other parts were late. The complex international work sequence got out of whack.

It turns out the Dreamliner in that flashy debut in July was a husk, lacking such essentials as wiring. It had to be taken apart. Like Humpty Dumpty, it isn't back together again.

"There's concern now, and also some 'told ya so,' " Wroblewski says. "We're committed to making this work. But we also think they should bring Boeing back home."

Bogash says even in the old days a lot of parts were from elsewhere. Yet the jets were all hand built here, like stick houses. The joke was that half the weight was from shims to get the pieces to fit.

"It's fun to look back, but the company had to go in this new direction. Or die," Bogash says.

That's what Boeing bosses said last week — that in adapting to a flat world they had some growing pains.

Maybe. Or maybe the world remains stubbornly rounder than they thought.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Sunday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.