Outsourcing doesn't necessarily equate to poor quality. Nor does insourcing equate to high quality. WN has outsouced maintenance for a very long time without harm.
The first question a company should be asking when examining the possibility of outsourcing is whether the task they are outsourcing is a core competency or not. If it is, outsourcing is nuts. If it isn't outsourcing might make sense.
Then the company needs to ask whether more value can be obtained through outsourcing (i.e., would the other firm produce more value per dollar than we can produce). The quality of the work must be part of the equation. In fact, the general rule of thumb one should apply is asking whether the customer would ever notice the difference.
One could make the argument that the customer won't notice the difference since the mechanical parts are never seen by the customer. But it doesn't take too many incidents before the name "US Scareways" starts being used again.
In short, the issue shouldn't be outsourcing itself. It should be the quality of the job being done.
And, yes, I know, there's also the separate (but equally valid) issue regarding contract violation, but that isn't the particular focus of this thread.
