The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that it is an old saw, but a good one: If you take care of the small things, the big things will take care of themselves. The Globe's Gus Carlson writes that if only Emily Dickinson had been a Boeing executive. As it becomes clearer that a critical element of the beleaguered plane maker's problems is its outsourcing of small things to third party suppliers to save money at the expense of quality, someone at the company must be wishing its decision-makers had paid attention to the simple, if quaint, observation. Those small things Boeing delegated in the name of profitability have put big things at risk -- namely the safety of millions of travellers who fly in its aircraft and, perhaps, even the long-term health of the company itself. For many manufacturers, flaws in the value chain are annoying and cost money to fix, but they are not life and death. Not so for Boeing. On a multimillion-dollar aircraft designed to carry hundreds of passengers, the stakes are higher, and virtually every element, including the small things, matters. Given the Boeing-Airbus duopoly, breaking that contract with customers in the name of saving a few bucks is apparently a little too tempting.