neomax wrote:

Yes, they should. There's a world beyond the US and Boeing should have global manufacturing facilities if they want to be a true global aerospace company.

Are you aware that Boeing has supplier partners all over the world?

I always love these threads. Like the ones that ask if Airline XYZ should add a flight from MIA to PEK. If the company decides it’s a good business decision to do so, then they should. Otherwise, they won’t.

An airplane factory is very expensive. Boeing isn’t just going to add more around the world to look like a global company.

I don't want to make this a political issue, but the current administration has been very pro-made in the USA. I can't see Boeing building a complete manufacturing facility overseas.

SomebodyInTLS wrote:

LoganTheBogan wrote:

I've always wondered why Australia has never housed any aircraft manufacturing plants. Sure, we are in a remote location but we have sh*t tones of space and rather good political relationships with a lot of other countries.

the (ex) Boeing plants in Australia manufacture(d) many parts for many aircraft, including tip fences for Airbus...
According to Wikipedia, Boeing Australia is still "Boeing's largest footprint outside the United States":
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Australia

What does that mean, if Fuji, Kawasaki, Mitsubishi & Yuasa all produce significant parts of the 767, 777 & 787 ?
I mean wings, wingbox, fuselage barrels. lithium-ion batteries. What does Oz produce exactly ?



http://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-7 ... rs-2013-10

LoganTheBogan wrote:

I've always wondered why Australia has never housed any aircraft manufacturing plants. Sure, we are in a remote location but we have sh*t tones of space and rather good political relationships with a lot of other countries.

We are too busy digging up the ground and living above our means in expensive homes, mortgaged to oblivion and driving around in expensive BMW and Mercedes cars, just so we can look important.

Gemuser wrote:

They are not! BUT you said " Australia has never housed any aircraft manufacturing plants". It's the "never" part that I reacted to.

Gemuser

It only matters if they exist. Which they don't. And besides, it would cost more to build aircraft here than it would to build them in China or somewhere else like that.

B737900ER wrote:

Nobody cares that their baby formula manufactured in China has lead in it.

Umm, I think people do care about that. It is why everyone is buying up all of the baby-formula produced in Australia non stop making it sometimes near impossible buy it here (shops have limits on how much people can buy).

Gemuser wrote:

LoganTheBogan wrote:

Gemuser wrote:

Then what do you call the GAF, Commonwealth Aircraft & Victa aircraft manufacturing plants?

Gemuser

Never knew they were still going.

They are not! BUT you said " Australia has never housed any aircraft manufacturing plants". It's the "never" part that I reacted to.

Gemuser

Right. I should have been more clear on what I was saying. I should have said something along the lines of "why doesn't Australia have any large scale aircraft manufacturing plants for Boeing, Airbus or other manufacturers?"

I guess its been answered now with it being because we have high labor costs.

Thanks mate!

Everyone is talking about opening a plant in Europe, but the most likely place (at this moment) for an overseas Boeing plant would be in Brazil.
When an Embraer/Boeing NSA comes around, production will move from Seattle to São José dos Campos.

Boeing has a different method of moving production out of the USA, they outsourced production domestically to companies like Spirit, then with investment partners in Japan and Europe who were responsible for producing various parts for the a/c. (This is the what some on this side call illegal subsidies for Boeing in the WTO cases). On the 787 we know the delays, when we dig into the details we see that their oversight in ensuring that their investments partners were ready and able to complete their task on time was lacking, hence they had to spend additional resources and time to get that production back in house resulting in the high deferred production cost that all and sundry know about.
So they may not have FAL's in other countries putting Boeing parts together, but they do have foreign companies designing and building their parts for assembly in the USA. The key point is that those foreign partners are also invested it is mostly their production facilities, not Boeing's, so for those countries which is better?

As a financial guy I like the Airbus strategy of spreading their foreign exchange exposure around (i.e. balancing their customer currencies revenue with cost currencies) with their overseas FAL's. This is far more sophisticated and harder to do than Boeing's corporate culture can handle in my opinion. Foreign currency fluctuations have a huge effect on profitability or losses over the long term. Even though Boeing's share prices continue to soar for now I believe that Airbus is better positioned for future success due to their ability to adapt to international realities better.
In summary, I believe that Boeing is incapable of becoming as global as Airbus so yes, they should build overseas FAL's but no, they won't do it.

N328KF wrote:

This thread totally ignores where Boeing's emphasis has been. They have been moving toward automation, and the 777X wing is an excellent example of this. Who cares where the robots that build much of the aircraft are located? Seattle robots, versus North Carolina robots versus...whatever. They're still robots. That's where Boeing is going. Obviously humans are going to have a role for the indefinite future, but it will be increasingly focused on tasks like final assembly.

The irony of manufacturing robots is that they require maintenance and handling from highly skilled workers. So you see a trend from many people riveting frames on a moving line to a few less people who are paid more to keep the robots working. Robots require maintenance, upkeep, repairs, tuning, qualifying, etc ad nausem, and that's before a design change comes down and the re-programming, benchmarking, qualifying, etc ad nausem of new parts. So a highly automated line would still rely on a region that can supply qualified workers. The presence of schools with aerospace programs is a big plus as well.

LoganTheBogan wrote:

Never knew they were still going.

They're not, as GAF. They are now part of Boeing Australia.

http://www.boeing.com.au

The history of it, from Wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Governmen ... _Factories

"In 1987, the Government Aircraft Factories was reorganised and renamed as Aerospace Technologies of Australia (ASTA). In June 1995 ASTA was privatised, with the sale proceeds returning $40 million to the Commonwealth.[8] Aerospace Technologies of Australia is now part of Boeing Australia."

mariner

Skywatcher wrote:

As a financial guy I like the Airbus strategy of spreading their foreign exchange exposure around (i.e. balancing their customer currencies revenue with cost currencies) with their overseas FAL's. This is far more sophisticated and harder to do than Boeing's corporate culture can handle in my opinion. Foreign currency fluctuations have a huge effect on profitability or losses over the long term. Even though Boeing's share prices continue to soar for now I believe that Airbus is better positioned for future success due to their ability to adapt to international realities better.
In summary, I believe that Boeing is incapable of becoming as global as Airbus so yes, they should build overseas FAL's but no, they won't do it.

This is a most sensible post, short, to the point, and correct. Well done Sir.

Aesma wrote:

Apple is a bigger name than Boeing both in the US and outside of it and everything is made not in the USA.

FWIW, Apple has worked on bringing some manufacturing to the US. And while the FALs for much of Apple's products are in China, like Boeing and Airbus they source parts from all over the world, including the US, for instance, a fair amount of iPhone glass is made in Kentucky.

A more interesting point is looking at what percentage of the final item cost is sourced from each country. For the iPhone a very small amount of the final cost is in assembly, although I would be surprised if this was the same for airplanes.

From reading various posts, I guess the general consensus is that Boeing doesn't "need" to but it wouldnt hurt them if they did. I think it would be a very wise move for boeing to start opening plants up around the world like Airbus. Strengthen some relationships, create new ones, play the game like Airbus are doing. I reckon opening FALs in Japan and somewhere in Europe would be very good moves.

Skywatcher wrote:

As a financial guy I like the Airbus strategy of spreading their foreign exchange exposure around (i.e. balancing their customer currencies revenue with cost currencies) with their overseas FAL's.

So does this mean that the Airbus financial instruments for the USA are designed around high value but low volume? We know that the USA FAL is 40 - 50 frames PER YEAR and not expected to reach that until 2019, China currency trading still has much government control.
Unless Airbus intends to also turn the USA FAL to a delivery center where frames assembled in Europe are flown over to be delivered from the USA in dollars thus increasing the volume to something substantial?

par13del wrote:

Skywatcher wrote:

As a financial guy I like the Airbus strategy of spreading their foreign exchange exposure around (i.e. balancing their customer currencies revenue with cost currencies) with their overseas FAL's.

So does this mean that the Airbus financial instruments for the USA are designed around high value but low volume? We know that the USA FAL is 40 - 50 frames PER YEAR and not expected to reach that until 2019, China currency trading still has much government control.
Unless Airbus intends to also turn the USA FAL to a delivery center where frames assembled in Europe are flown over to be delivered from the USA in dollars thus increasing the volume to something substantial?

The A320 family final assembly line in Mobil has reached the rate of 4 frames a month, 48 frames a year at the end of last year.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=607145&start=100

As those single lines are designed for 8 frames a month, the rate of the current assembly line can be raised by expanding peripheral capabilities.
I expect that to happen soon and I expect Mobile to be at rate 8, 96 frames a year sometime in 2019. .

par13del wrote:

Skywatcher wrote:

As a financial guy I like the Airbus strategy of spreading their foreign exchange exposure around (i.e. balancing their customer currencies revenue with cost currencies) with their overseas FAL's.

So does this mean that the Airbus financial instruments for the USA are designed around high value but low volume? We know that the USA FAL is 40 - 50 frames PER YEAR and not expected to reach that until 2019, China currency trading still has much government control.
Unless Airbus intends to also turn the USA FAL to a delivery center where frames assembled in Europe are flown over to be delivered from the USA in dollars thus increasing the volume to something substantial?

The A320 family final assembly line in Mobil has reached the rate of 4 frames a month, 48 frames a year at the end of last year.
Mobile delivered 36 frames in 2017, still ramping up from rate 2 in the beginning of the year to rate 4 in the end of the year.

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=607145&start=100

As those single lines are designed for 8 frames a month, the rate of the current assembly line can be raised by expanding peripheral capabilities.
I expect that to happen soon and I expect Mobile to be at rate 8, 96 frames a year sometime in 2019.

Samrnpage wrote:

From reading various posts, I guess the general consensus is that Boeing doesn't "need" to but it wouldnt hurt them if they did. I think it would be a very wise move for boeing to start opening plants up around the world like Airbus. Strengthen some relationships, create new ones, play the game like Airbus are doing. I reckon opening FALs in Japan and somewhere in Europe would be very good moves.

Boeing doesn’t make business decision because “it wouldn’t hurt if they did”. I think the strategy of using international suppliers and opening design centers in other countries is very sound and reasonable.

Also remember that Airbus playing games has led to big corruption investigations.

mjoelnir wrote:

I expect that to happen soon and I expect Mobile to be at rate 8, 96 frames a year sometime in 2019.

So 96 frames per year on an overall production of 700+ frames is a significant enough financial currency hedge to make this the better form of investment in other countries over allowing other countries to use their financial resources and technical knowledge as investment partners?
Ok, maybe that is why some look at Japans contribution to Boeing a/c production as an illegal subsidy.

par13del wrote:

mjoelnir wrote:

I expect that to happen soon and I expect Mobile to be at rate 8, 96 frames a year sometime in 2019.

So 96 frames per year on an overall production of 700+ frames is a significant enough financial currency hedge to make this the better form of investment in other countries over allowing other countries to use their financial resources and technical knowledge as investment partners?
Ok, maybe that is why some look at Japans contribution to Boeing a/c production as an illegal subsidy.

The illegal subsidies are the contributions of the Japanese state.

B737900ER wrote:

Arion640 wrote:

But what about "national pride" ? some people couldn't bear the fact a Boeing airliner wouldn't have "Manufactured by the Boeing company in Seattle" plate attached to it.

What people? Nobody really cares where their stuff is made. The same people who stick out their chests and yell USA USA USA, won’t hesitate to buy a ticket on an Airbus if the price is three dollars cheaper, or buy imported goods from Walmart if it’s .40 cents cheaper than the American product.

That also depends on if that person is just somebody random or a displaced Boeing worker.

Andre3K wrote:

B737900ER wrote:

Arion640 wrote:

But what about "national pride" ? some people couldn't bear the fact a Boeing airliner wouldn't have "Manufactured by the Boeing company in Seattle" plate attached to it.

What people? Nobody really cares where their stuff is made. The same people who stick out their chests and yell USA USA USA, won’t hesitate to buy a ticket on an Airbus if the price is three dollars cheaper, or buy imported goods from Walmart if it’s .40 cents cheaper than the American product.

That also depends on if that person is just somebody random or a displaced Boeing worker.

Speaking just in US terms, there are 300 million random people opposed to how many displaced Boeing workers?

Who wins that fight?

B737900ER wrote:

Andre3K wrote:

B737900ER wrote:

What people? Nobody really cares where their stuff is made. The same people who stick out their chests and yell USA USA USA, won’t hesitate to buy a ticket on an Airbus if the price is three dollars cheaper, or buy imported goods from Walmart if it’s .40 cents cheaper than the American product.

That also depends on if that person is just somebody random or a displaced Boeing worker.

Speaking just in US terms, there are 300 million random people opposed to how many displaced Boeing workers?

Who wins that fight?

Well when you consider the stink that was made over Carrier company moving 1400 jobs to Mexico, I still think it's relevant. And that's not even considering subcontractors in the US.

Your turn.