Long before the harrowing Alaska Airlines blowout on Jan. 5, there were concerns within Boeing about the way the aerospace giant was building its planes. Boeing, like so many other American manufacturers, was outsourcing more and more of the components that went into its complex machines.
2001年，波音一位航空工程师在一次内部技术研讨会上提交了一份有争议的白皮书。这位名叫John Hart-Smith的工程师提醒同事们注意分包战略的风险，尤其是如果波音外包了太多的工作，而又没有为供应商提供足够的现场质量和技术支持的话。
A Boeing aerospace engineer presented a controversial white paper in 2001 at an internal technical symposium. The engineer, John Hart-Smith, warned colleagues of the risks of the subcontracting strategy, especially if Boeing outsourced too much work and didn’t provide sufficient on-site quality and technical support to its suppliers.
“水平最低的供应商的能力决定了这个一流制造商表现的上限，”Hart-Smith写道。“这些代价不会仅仅因为这些工作看不到而消失了。”
“The performance of the prime manufacturer can never exceed the capabilities of the least proficient of the suppliers,” Hart-Smith wrote. “These costs do not vanish merely because the work itself is out-of-sight.”
The paper became a sensation within Boeing. It was passed among engineers. Posted on factory walls. Hart-Smith, after he later retired from Boeing, said of his warning of excessive outsourcing: “It’s common sense.”
20年后的今天，波音正在重新审视其外包战略带来的后果。
Two decades later, Boeing is reckoning with the fallout from its outsourcing strategy.
阿拉斯加航空事故是波音一连串质量问题中的最新一起。波音以其精湛的工程技术制造了帮助开创全球喷气机时代的747飞机。2018年和2019年，发生了两起致命的737 MAX 8坠机事故，导致数百架喷气式飞机被禁飞近两年，波音的声誉也因此受损。最近，波音的多个机型都出现了问题——钻孔错误、方向舵螺栓松动以及本月发生的MAX 9舱门脱落事故，这些都是波音未能提早发现的疏漏。
The Alaska accident is the latest in a string of quality problems at Boeing, whose engineering prowess created the 747 that helped usher in the global jet age. The company’s reputation has suffered from a pair of fatal 737 MAX 8 crashes in 2018 and 2019 that grounded hundreds of jets for nearly two years. More recently, Boeing has been dogged by issues with various models—misdrilled holes, loose rudder bolts, and this month’s MAX 9 door-plug blowout—lapses the company failed to catch.
波音飞机自上述致命坠机事件发生以来出现的许多问题，都可以追溯到波音及其航空业竞争对手在Hart-Smith发表这份白皮书之前采用的一套生产系统。在波音飞机的制造过程中，先由数十家工厂制造737和787喷气式飞机的关键部件，之后波音再对这些飞机进行总装。这其中就包括位于美国堪萨斯州威奇托市的一家规模庞大的机身工厂，波音一直到2005年都是这家工厂的所有者。
Many of the problems with Boeing jets since the deadly crashes can be traced back to a production system adopted by Boeing and its aerospace rivals before Hart-Smith’s paper. Dozens of factories build key pieces of 737 and 787 jets before they are assembled by Boeing. One of them is a sprawling fuselage plant in Wichita, Kan., that Boeing owned until 2005.
当时，时任波音高管穆拉利(Alan Mulally)表示，将该工厂出售给一家私募股权投资公司可以让波音专注于总装业务。在总装过程中，波音可以为其飞机增加最大的价值。
At the time, then-Boeing executive Alan Mulally said selling the factory to a private-equity firm would let Boeing focus on final assembly, where it could add the most value to its airplanes.
The factory is now run by a public company called Spirit AeroSystems and it has been plagued by production problems and quality lapses since Boeing ceded so much responsibility for its work. Spirit was once held up by Boeing brass as an exemplary partner—where staff pulled together after a tornado ripped through the facility in 2012.
Spirit是许多波音飞机机身的唯一供应商，包括上述紧急迫降的阿拉斯加航空飞机。Spirit的收入严重依赖波音，这两家公司多年来一直在成本和质量问题上纠纷不断。早些时候的MAX机型停飞和新冠疫情耗尽了Spirit的资金，该公司削减了数千个工作岗位，导致需求反弹时出现人手短缺问题。
Spirit is the sole supplier of the fuselages used in many Boeing jets, including the Alaska plane that made the emergency landing. It is heavily dependent on Boeing for revenue, and the two companies have battled for years over costs and quality issues. The earlier MAX grounding and Covid-19 pandemic sapped Spirit’s finances, and the company slashed thousands of jobs, leaving it short-handed when demand bounced back.
Spirit的一些员工说，生产问题司空见惯，有关质量问题的内部投诉也被置之不理。以每天生产两架机身的速度计算，该公司一个月中需要用螺栓、紧固件和铆钉组合填充的孔洞多达1,000万个。
Some Spirit employees said production problems were common and internal complaints about quality were ignored. In a given month, at a production rate of two fuselages a day, there are 10 million holes that need to be filled with some combination of bolts, fasteners and rivets.
国际机械师和航空航天工人协会(International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers)的一个分会代表Spirit威奇托工厂的工人，该分会主席Cornell Beard说：“我们在全世界的飞机都有一些没人发现的问题，因为Spirit给员工施加了压力，要求他们快速完成工作。”
“We have planes all over the world that have issues that nobody has found because of the pressure Spirit has put on employees to get the job done so fast,” said Cornell Beard, president of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers chapter representing workers at Spirit’s Wichita factory.
Spirit表示，将继续“专注于从我们工厂出去的每架飞机的质量”。波音表示，将努力向官员们保证“飞行中的每一架波音飞机都是切实安全的”。
Spirit said that it remains “focused on the quality of each aircraft that leaves our facilities.” Boeing said it would work to reassure officials that “every airplane that Boeing has its name on that’s in the sky is in fact safe.”
Federal investigators are still trying to figure out what specifically caused an emergency-door plug to detach from the Alaska Airlines jet at 16,000 feet, leaving the MAX 9 flying with a gaping hole. In the wake of the accident, regulators have grounded roughly 170 MAX planes. Airlines are frustrated. Travelers are spooked.
调查可能需要几个月的时间，不过官员们已将最初的工作重点放在舱门本身以及连接舱门与机身的螺栓和其他部件上。阿拉斯加航空和美国联合航空(United Airlines, 简称：美联航)表示，在检查过的其他MAX 9飞机上也发现了松动的硬件。这意味着问题不止出现在一架飞机上。
The investigations could take months, though officials have focused their initial efforts on the door plug itself and the bolts and other components that attach it to the fuselage. Alaska Airlines and United Airlines say they have found loose hardware on other MAX 9 jets they have checked, suggesting that problems go beyond one plane.
波音和Spirit都表示，其员工正在与调查人员合作，确保所有飞机符合安全要求才会重新投入使用。
Both Boeing and Spirit say their staff are cooperating with investigators and ensuring all aircraft meet safety requirements before they return to service.
上周五，美国航空管理局(Federal Aviation Administration, 简称FAA)表示将加强对波音生产的监督，包括对MAX 9生产的稽核。
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration said it would increase oversight of Boeing’s manufacturing, including an audit of MAX 9 production.
去年10月经确认上任的FAA局长Mike Whitaker在接受采访时表示，对MAX 9问题的初步检查将扩大到其他飞机，以及该局如何监管波音的生产。
FAA chief Mike Whitaker, who was confirmed to his job in October, said in an interview that an initial examination of MAX 9 problems would extend to other aircraft—and how the agency regulates Boeing production.
“过去几年无论发生了什么都没有奏效，因为这种情况已持续多年了，”他说。“所有迹象都表明，是制造问题导致了阿拉斯加航空的这起事故，而不是设计缺陷。”
“Whatever’s happened over the previous years—because this has been going on for years—has not worked,” he said. “All indications are it’s manufacturing” that led to the Alaska accident, he added, not a design flaw.
A few days after the near-catastrophe, Boeing Chief Executive David Calhoun told staff at the Renton, Wash., plant that assembles 737s that they were fortunate that the Alaska pilots were able to save the passengers and the company needed to take responsibility for “our mistake.”
卡尔霍恩没有具体说明他的意思，但明确表示，无论问题源于Spirit还是波音的工作，波音最终都要负责检查离开其工厂的飞机。在同一次会议上，波音商业航空业务主管Stan Deal说：“飞机是我们造的，我们必须确保万无一失。”
He didn’t specify what he meant but made clear that whether the problem originated with work done by Spirit or Boeing, Boeing ultimately is responsible for checking planes that leave its plants. At the same meeting, Stan Deal, head of Boeing’s commercial airline business, said: “We build the airplane and we have to own it.”
这是波音首次承认自己对安全失误负有责任，也是首次承认卡尔霍恩自2020年初执掌波音以来一直未能整顿公司的生产。这位波音的长期董事兼前通用电气(General Electric)高管是在MAX 8坠机事件后前任首席执行官下台后走马上任的。
It was the first admission that Boeing saw itself as being at fault for the safety lapse and that Calhoun hasn’t been able to clean up the company’s manufacturing since he took the helm in early 2020. The longtime Boeing director and former General Electric executive was brought in following the ouster of the prior CEO in the wake of the MAX 8 crashes.
在波音的全体员工大会上，66岁的卡尔霍恩说，他曾担心坐在洞口旁边座位上的阿拉斯加航空乘客。“我有孩子，我有孙辈，你们也一样，”他说。“这件事很重要。每个细节都很重要。”
At the Boeing all-hands meeting, Calhoun, 66 years old, said he had worried about the Alaska passengers in the seats next to the hole. “I’ve got kids, I’ve got grandkids and so do you,” he said. “This stuff matters. Every detail matters.”
Much modern manufacturing has become atomized. From hot tubs to iPhones, machines are built in small pieces by different companies, then delivered to another factory for final assembly. The system has sliced costs from the process by letting production lines maximize output and eliminate waste. But the strategy also stretches oversight and adds risks, since the final product is only as good as the least-good supplier.
Spirit首席执行官Pat Shanahan在去年秋天接受采访时说：“如果我们不成功，他们也不会成功。”这位波音前高管在去年10月接任了Spirit首席执行官一职。
“If we’re not successful, they’re not successful,” Spirit CEO Pat Shanahan said in an interview last fall. The former Boeing executive took over as Spirit’s leader in October.
上图是一架不同的737 MAX 9飞机上的门塞下部在等待检查。下图是一架MAX上的门塞，也在等待检查。
Boeing is proud of its supply chain. It says it can bring in the best technology from around the globe while reducing costs and maintaining flexibility. A poster in its South Carolina assembly plant features a diagram of a 787 showing what companies and countries supply the various parts.
不过，波音高管会定期评估是否将包括机身在内的主要部件的生产迁回公司内部。他们选择了在南卡罗来纳州的工厂生产787的机尾部分。
Yet Boeing executives regularly evaluate whether to move production of major components, including fuselages, back in-house. They opted to build the aft section of the 787 at the company’s South Carolina factory.
卡尔霍恩去年驳斥了波音可能收购供应商Spirit的说法，此前Spirit的生产问题导致了交付延迟。他在去年的一次新闻发布会上说：“我不认为收购就能解决一家公司的问题。”
Calhoun last year shot down suggestions that the jet maker might acquire Spirit after the production flaws from the supplier led to delivery delays. “I don’t think you acquire a company to solve it,” he said at a press conference last year.
欧洲竞争对手空中客车(Airbus)也采取类似的生产方式，从全球各地的工厂采购，包括从Spirit采购机身和其他关键零部件。去年，空中客车与一家发动机供应商之间出现了重大问题，该供应商的金属污染导致全球数百架空客飞机停飞维修。
European rival Airbus follows a similar manufacturing approach, sourcing from factories across the globe—including fuselages and other key parts from Spirit. Last year, Airbus faced a major problem with an engine supplier whose metal contamination is sidelining hundreds of Airbus jets worldwide for repairs.
空中客车CEO傅里(Guillaume Faury)在去年6月的一次采访中说，空客面临类似的供应商风险。但他表示，凭借自身的质量保证办法，空中客车基本能避免重大问题。空中客车的供应商群体与波音存在很大一部分交集。
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury, in a June interview, said the plane maker faces similar risks with its own suppliers—many of which Boeing shares. But he said Airbus has largely been able to avoid major problems with its quality-assurance approach.
“We are quite intrusive on what suppliers are doing,” Faury said. “We always have to remain very prudent and very humble—you don’t know what could hit you tomorrow.”
本世纪第一个十年，波音在787梦想飞机(787 Dreamliner)项目上加码押注外包方式；787梦想飞机是波音历史上首款曾重度依赖供应商的设计的喷气式飞机。为了降低新设计的成本和风险，波音授权数十家供应商设计和制造该机型的一些主要部分，包括大体完工的机身部分。该策略加快了这种新机型的开发速度，但却造成了生产延误和数以十亿美元计的计划外成本。
Boeing doubled down on the outsourcing approach in the 2000s with the 787 Dreamliner, which was the first jet in its history that was heavily designed by suppliers. To lower costs and risks of a new design, Boeing authorized dozens of suppliers to design and build major sections of the 787, including mostly completed fuselage sections. The strategy sped up development of the new model but resulted in production delays and billions in unplanned costs.
波音前高管安波杰(Jim Albaugh)曾在2011年表示，这种做法适得其反。“事后看来，我们在事后弥补方面花了很多钱，如果我们当初寻求让许多关键技术更贴近波音的要求，花的钱会少得多，” 安波杰在西雅图大学(Seattle University)发表演讲时表示。“步子迈得过于大了。”
In 2011, former Boeing executive Jim Albaugh said that the approach had backfired. “In hindsight, we spent a lot more money in trying to recover than we ever would have spent if we tried to keep many of the key technologies closer to Boeing,” he said in an address at Seattle University. “The pendulum swung too far.”
MAX并非全新的喷气式飞机设计。它是737的最新主力机型；737是1968年首次投入使用的单通道主力机型。几十年来，交付给航空公司的737已超过11,000架。MAX配备了有望帮助节省燃油和增加续航里程的新型发动机。该款飞机于2017年投入使用，但在事故发生后于2019年和2020年被停飞。
The MAX is not a brand-new jet design. It is the latest major version of the 737, a single-aisle workhorse that first entered service in 1968. More than 11,000 737s have been delivered to airlines over the decades. The MAX had new engines that promised to boost fuel savings and range. It entered service in 2017, but was grounded in 2019 and 2020 after the accidents.
在新冠疫情期间，分散式的制造体系受到了考验，当时工厂人手短缺，需求受到干扰，运输受阻。这些干扰对航空航天业务的影响非常严重。旅行停止了。飞机停飞。工厂停工。而疫情之后，该行业又很难以足够快的速度重新启动，以满足重新恢复的旅行需求。
The distributed manufacturing system was tested during the pandemic, when factories were short-handed, demand was distorted and transportation was tangled. Those disruptions were acute in the aerospace business. Travel stopped. Planes were grounded. Factories were stalled. Then, the industry struggled to restart quickly enough to meet resurgent travel.
Spirit itself was hard hit. The company, which had 15,900 workers in four U.S. factories at the end of 2019, laid off thousands of people in Wichita at the height of the pandemic. When it needed to ramp back up, not only did Spirit have fewer people on site, the company had lost years of expertise. There were fewer experienced mechanics, but also fewer experts who could inspect the quality of their work.
Spirit的CEO Shanahan说，生产快速恢复和早些时候MAX停飞使公司缺少有经验的工人。他说：“一旦出现干扰事件，就会出现不稳定。”
Shanahan, the Spirit chief, said the quick production ramp-up and the earlier MAX grounding left the company short of experienced workers. “When you have disruption, you have instability,” he said.
波音公司的Calhoun说，他对Shanahan很有信心。“我知道Pat知道事情的严重性，”他在接受CNBC采访时说。“我也知道，他知道如何询问盘查生产过程。”
Boeing’s Calhoun said he has confidence in Shanahan. “I know that Pat knows the seriousness,” he said in an interview on CNBC. “I also know he knows how to interrogate a manufacturing process.”
For more than a decade, Spirit and Boeing battled over costs, quality and the pace of production. Boeing’s demands for lower prices left Spirit strapped for cash as managers panicked over meeting increasingly demanding deadlines. Boeing routinely had employees on the ground in Wichita and conducted audits of the supplier.
一些现任和前任员工说，这样做的结果是，工厂的工人们急于完成不切实际的配额，而指出问题的人会受到劝阻，甚至遭到惩罚。他们说，越来越多的飞机带着所谓的“疏漏”（即未被发现的缺陷）从威奇托出厂。
The result, some current and former employees say: a factory where workers rush to meet unrealistic quotas and where pointing out problems is discouraged if not punished. Increasingly, they say, planes have been leaving Wichita with so-called escapements, or undetected defects.
曾任Spirit质量审核员的Joshua Dean说：“众所周知，在Spirit，如果你说太多不中听的话，造成太多的麻烦，你就会被赶走。”他说自己因为指出机上的钻孔错误而被解雇。Dean说：“这并不意味着完全无视这些问题，但他们不希望你发现所有问题并记录下来。”
“It is known at Spirit that if you make too much noise and cause too much trouble, you will be moved,” said Joshua Dean, a former Spirit quality auditor who says he was fired after flagging misdrilled holes in fuselages. “It doesn’t mean you completely disregard stuff, but they don’t want you to find everything and write it up.”
去年12月份针对Spirit提起的一桩股东诉讼指控该公司未披露造成严重损失的缺陷，其中引用了Dean的说法。
His account is included in a shareholder lawsuit filed in December against Spirit that alleges the company failed to disclose costly defects.
一位Spirit发言人说，公司坚决不同意这种说法，并打算对该诉讼进行抗辩。
A Spirit spokesman said the company strongly disagrees with the assertions and intends to defend against the suit.
After being laid off during the pandemic shutdown, Dean returned to Spirit in May 2021. By then, he said, the company had lost many of its most experienced mechanics and auditors.
Spirit已经受到了波音公司更严格的审查。波音将Spirit置于所谓的“考察期”，在此期间更加严格地审视Spirit的工作。Spirit需要减少生产线上出现的问题数量才能脱离考察期。
Spirit already was under more intense scrutiny from Boeing. The jet maker placed Spirit on a so-called probation, in which the company more closely scrutinized the supplier’s work. To get off probation, Spirit needed to reduce the number of defects on the line.
Dean说，有一次，公司为员工举办了一个披萨派对，庆祝报告的问题数量下降。结果大家在聚会上聊的是，所有人都心知肚明数量下降只是因为员工报告的问题减少了。
At one point, Dean said, the company threw a pizza party for employees to celebrate a drop in the number of defects reported. Chatter at the party turned to how everyone knew that the defect numbers were down only because people were reporting fewer problems.
在Spirit的工厂车间里，一些制造飞机的机械师说，他们对质量的担忧很少能传达到较高级别的管理人员那里，而且质量检查人员担心，如果他们指出的问题太多会遭到报复。
On the Spirit factory floor, some machinists building planes say their concerns about quality rarely get conveyed to more senior managers, and that quality inspectors fear retaliation if they point out too many problems.
去年秋天，多名工会代表向工会领导投诉说，该公司在检查员指出多处缺陷后，就把他们从生产线上调离，用外包员工取而代之。“这让他们非常担心质量和安全问题，”其中一名代表在给工会管理人员的一封电子邮件中写道。“同时，他们还感到自己因为履行职责而遭到了报复。”
Union representatives complained to leaders last fall that the company removed inspectors from line jobs and replaced them with contract workers after they flagged multiple defects. “This is leaving them with great quality and safety concerns,” one of the representatives wrote in an email to union officials. “Also feeling retaliated against for doing their jobs.”
工会还就机械师是否应该负责检查自己的工作与Spirit发生了冲突。工人们说，由不同的检查员对个人工作进行检查并放行是质量控制的关键；而Spirit和波音公司的高管们则说，在某些情况下技术进步已经降低了对单设检查员的需求。
The union also has clashed with Spirit over whether machinists should ever be responsible for checking their own work. Workers say having separate inspectors sign off on individual work is critical for quality control; Spirit and Boeing executives say that technological advances have reduced the need for separate inspectors in some cases.
Boeing’s latest manufacturing mess first came to light after the two MAX 8 jets crashed five years ago. Crash investigators blamed the accidents, which took 346 lives, in large part on a faulty flight-control system designed by Boeing—not production problems.
在随后的国会听证会上，位于伦顿的737工厂的一名前生产经理提供了证词。美国众议院调查人员披露了该经理撰写的一份备忘录，其中抱怨生产压力导致了生产上的隐患。
The ensuing congressional hearings featured testimony from a former production manager at the 737 factory in Renton. U.S. House investigators revealed a memo the manager wrote complaining of production pressures leading to dangerous factory flaws.
“坦率地说，现在我内心所有的警钟都在敲响，”Ed Pierson在2018年7月19日给波音公司一位高管的信中写道。“我很抱歉地说，有生以来第一次，我对让家人乘坐波音飞机感到犹豫了。”
“Frankly right now all my internal warning bells are going off,” Ed Pierson wrote to a Boeing executive July 19, 2018. “And for the first time in my life, I’m sorry to say that I’m hesitant about putting my family on a Boeing airplane.”
此后不久，FAA对波音公司的工厂质量展开了一项调查，此外，通过撤销该公司代表监管机构对新生产的飞机进行最终安全检查的权力，加强了对该公司的监管。将FAA的某些权力下放是航空业的常见做法。
Soon thereafter, the FAA launched a probe of Boeing’s factory quality and tightened its oversight by revoking the company’s ability to perform final safety checks on newly produced airplanes on regulators’ behalf. Delegating certain FAA authorities is common in aviation.
自那之后的数年里，不仅是737机型，波音公司生产787梦想飞机、一款美军加油机和空军一号(Air Force One)替代飞机的其他工厂以及一些关键供应商也出现了制造方面的问题。
In the years since, manufacturing problems have emerged not only in the 737 but at other factories where Boeing makes its 787 Dreamliner, a U.S. military refueling tanker and Air Force One replacement jets, as well as at some of its key suppliers.
由于787和737机型的一些问题都可追溯到Spirit，波音公司的高管们在2023年表示，将加强对Spirit的监督。Spirit一度为波音所拥有。
As some problems on both the 787 and 737 were traced back to Spirit, Boeing executives said in 2023 that the plane maker would be ratcheting up oversight of the supplier it once owned.
波音商业飞机部门的主管Deal在2023年5月的一次新闻发布会上说：“从质量管理体系的角度来看，我们将开展一些重要的剩余活动。”他稍后表示，波音公司将加强培训和检查，增加到供应商现场开展实地工作的人员，因为这“总是会成为一个风险领域”。
“There’ll be some residual activity that we do that is important from a quality-management system,” Deal, the Boeing commercial chief, said at a May 2023 press conference. Boeing would bolster training and inspections with more boots on the ground with suppliers, he later said, because that “always becomes an area of risk.”
