Reply #10: Too many components have been outsourced

[End Of The Road]

and when Boeing tries to put them together in the assembly line, they don't always fit together.

Mitsubishi makes the wings
Kawasaki makes the forward fuselage
Fuji makes the center wing box
Saab makes the cargo doors
Alenia Aeronautica in Italy makes central fuselage & horizontal stabilizer
Other parts are made by companies in Britain, France, Germany, and South Korea
And at least 10 U.S. companies contribute various parts

According to a WSJ article from 2007, some of these handpicked suppliers outsourced the work to other companies, and "When mechanics opened boxes and crates accompanying the fuselage sections, they found them filled with thousands of brackets, clips, wires and other items that already should have been installed. In some cases, officials say, components came with no paperwork at all, or assembly instructions WRITTEN IN ITALIAN!!" (Those caps & exclamation points are mine.)

Move forward two years to 2009, and things had gotten better but there were still problems. From a Businessweek article, January 2009: "Suppliers can produce parts precisely to order, for instance, but then when the parts are put into place they may not fit correctly or may require adjustments. When a project is all done under one roof, such changes can be made quickly. But when the supplier is halfway across the globe, changes can take weeks."

I've read somewhere that Boeing is going back to making many of the parts themselves, but I think the early deliveries will be these with the brazillion outsourced parts.

I think they'll get it fixed, eventually. And I'm glad none of the outsourcing was to China.