Boeing Calls Time on the Great American Outsourcing
波音宣布结束美国大规模外包

The pandemic hit to jet production was particularly devastating for Spirit, which accumulated $2.6 billion in losses between 2020 and 2023. This year, analysts expect net income to come in at minus $681 million. Its quality-control lapses—including goofy ones such as badly drilled holes—have in turn been a headache for Boeing, which is under severe pressure from lawmakers and customers following the blowout of a 737 MAX-9 door plug in January.
疫情对喷气机生产的打击对 Spirit 来说尤为毁灭性，该公司在 2020 年至 2023 年间累计亏损 26 亿美元。分析师预计，今年净收入将达到负 6.81 亿美元。其质量控制失误，包括一些愚蠢的错误，比如钻孔不当，反过来给波音带来了麻烦，波音在 1 月份 737 MAX-9 门插销爆裂事件后受到立法者和客户的严厉压力。

Spirit said it would sell a chunk of its business to Airbus, resolving the problem posed by 19% of its revenue coming from Boeing’s rival.
Spirit 表示将一部分业务出售给空客，解决了其 19%收入来自波音竞争对手的问题。

The deal’s logic of vertical reintegration makes sense in light of recent history, with air-travel safety likely benefiting from centralized supervision and a simpler workflow between plants. Yet it is also an indictment of what executives in most industries have been doing for almost three decades.
最近历史上，垂直重整的交易逻辑是合理的，航空旅行安全可能受益于集中监督和工厂之间更简单的工作流程。然而，这也是对大多数行业高管近三十年来一直在做的事情的控诉。

When Boeing sold its Wichita and Tulsa operations to Canadian private-equity firm Onex in 2005, creating Spirit, aviation was still recovering from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The IT revolution, together with the rise of consultants and business schools, had made outsourcing fashionable. Before the late 1980s it was unusual: Even convenience-store chain 7-Eleven was vertically integrated with its own milk-producing cows and candy manufacturing.
当波音在 2005 年将其威奇托和塔尔萨业务出售给加拿大私募股权公司 Onex，创立了 Spirit 时，航空业仍在从 9/11 恐怖袭击中恢复过来。IT 革命以及顾问和商学院的兴起使外包变得时尚。在 20 世纪 80 年代后期之前，这是不寻常的：即使是便利店连锁店 7-Eleven 也是与自己的生产奶牛和糖果制造业纵向整合的。

Then, in 1989, Eastman Kodak pointed the way by tasking IBM with managing its data center. In 1996, General Electric showed how offshoring support jobs to low-wage countries such as India could help cut costs. Supply chains spread across the world: The share of imported value in U.S. manufacturing exports rose to a peak of 20% in the late 2000s, from 13% in the mid-1990s.
然后，1989 年，东曼柯达通过让 IBM 负责管理其数据中心指明了方向。1996 年，通用电气展示了将支持工作外包到印度等低工资国家如何有助于降低成本。供应链遍布全球：美国制造业出口中进口价值的份额从 1990 年代中期的 13%上升到 2000 年代末的 20%的峰值。

Renegotiating labor agreements was one rationale for an independent Spirit, and it broadly succeeded. The other was to gain economies of scale by selling to more manufacturers, which never worked as well.
重新谈判劳工协议是独立精神的一个理由，它在很大程度上取得了成功。另一个理由是通过向更多制造商销售来获得规模经济，但这一点从未取得很好的效果。

At the core of the outsourcing trend, however, was the idea that an “asset-light” firm focused on intellectual property and its “core” expertise would be better run.
在外包趋势的核心，然而，是这样一个观念：一个专注于知识产权和其“核心”专长的“轻资产”公司会更好地运营。

With this mindset, jettisoning aerostructures operations seemed like a no-brainer. It is a capital-intensive, competitive business that faces a lot of production pressure from final assembly—not unlike the jet-engine business but with narrower gross profit margins. Over the years, many of Spirit’s peers have either closed down or been taken over. In 2018, Britain’s GKN was bought by Melrose Industries.
有了这种心态，放弃航空结构业务似乎是一个不用多想的决定。这是一个资本密集型、竞争激烈的行业，面临着来自最终装配环节的许多生产压力，与喷气发动机业务类似，但毛利润率较窄。多年来，Spirit 的许多同行要么关闭，要么被收购。2018 年，英国的 GKN 被 Melrose Industries 收购。

It wasn’t just aerostructures: In the 2000s, Boeing outsourced more than 70% of the 787 Dreamliner program. But the problems with becoming an assembler of planes, as opposed to a true manufacturer, gradually became apparent. The company lost control of supply, resulting in years of delays and cost overruns.
这不仅仅是航空结构：在 2000 年代，波音公司将 787 梦幻客机项目的 70%以上外包。但成为飞机装配商而非真正的制造商所带来的问题逐渐显现。公司失去了对供应链的控制，导致多年的延误和成本超支。

Airbus followed Boeing’s lead, including with the 2009 carve-out of its two aerostructures subsidiaries, Premium Aerotec and Stelia Aerospace. It was perhaps lucky to find no good buyers. Now, Airbus also sees aerostructures as essential again.
空客效仿波音的做法，包括 2009 年将其两家航空结构子公司 Premium Aerotec 和 Stelia Aerospace 剥离出去。也许幸运的是没有找到合适的买家。现在，空客也再次将航空结构视为必不可少的。

Aerospace isn’t the only industry to revive vertical integration. Intel is beefing up chip manufacturing in the U.S., General Motors is building battery plants and Sweden’s IKEA is acquiring containerships.
航空航天并非唯一重振垂直整合的行业。英特尔正在加强在美国的芯片制造，通用汽车正在建设电池工厂，瑞典的宜家正在收购集装箱船。

One general flaw of the asset-light model is that, over time, firms can lose their innovative edge because a lot of “learning by doing” happens when production processes interact. Another is that low-margin bits of the supply chain get worn down to just a few sources. These may not have the financial muscle to make big investments in times of turmoil, or they may be geopolitically sensitive. Such risks were underscored by post-Covid shortages, particularly in the largely “fabless” U.S. microchip industry, which has outsourced chip making to foundries in East Asia in a way that echoes what happened to aerostructures.
资产轻模式的一个普遍缺陷是，随着时间的推移，企业可能会失去创新优势，因为在生产过程互动时会发生很多“通过实践学习”的情况。另一个是供应链中低利润部分被磨损到只剩下几个来源。这些可能没有财务实力在动荡时期进行大规模投资，或者它们可能在地缘政治上敏感。这些风险在后疫情时期的短缺中得到强调，特别是在主要“无厂”美国微芯片行业，该行业已将芯片制造外包给东亚的晶圆厂，这与航空结构发生的情况相似。

Spirit’s round trip back to Boeing was borne of desperation, yet it captures the zeitgeist.
精神的往返回波音是出于绝望，但却捕捉到了时代精神。

Write to Jon Sindreu at jon.sindreu@wsj.com
请写信给 Jon Sindreu，邮箱地址为 jon.sindreu@wsj.com。

Corrections & Amplifications
更正与补充
Boeing purchased Spirit AeroSystems. An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to the company in one instance as Spirit AeroSystem. (Corrected on July 2)
波音公司收购了精神航空系统公司。本文的早期版本在一处错误地将该公司称为精神航空系统公司。（已于 7 月 2 日更正）