Outsourcing Leads to Disaster

Boeing's 737 Max

Boeing chose to save money rather than protect lives. They outsourced critical engineering & technical roles to India for $9 hr. The outcome — death of passengers who flew on their 737 Max.

HCL & Cyient Ltd., two Indian companies, helped develop and test Max’s software for flight display and flight-test equipment. In addition to using inexperienced tech workers, they also cut corners to save costs and pigeonholed developers who could have potentially made a difference.

Boeing was doing all kinds of things, everything you can imagine, to reduce cost, including moving work from Puget Sound, because we’d become very expensive here. All that’s very understandable if you think of it from a business perspective. Slowly, over time it appears that’s eroded the ability for Puget Sound designers to design.

— Rick Ludtke, a former Boeing flight controls engineer laid off in 2017.

Source

Peter Robison. 2019. “Boeing’s 737 Max Software Outsourced to $9-an-Hour Engineers.” IndustryWeek. June 28, 2019.

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