Boeing is more than likely just shuffling the deck to appease investors (and maybe customers) after their long and public delays on the 787 and 747-8. Now they can show they made significant structural changes for the 737Max and 777NG programs. Big companies shuffle the deck all the time, it is their solution to all problems.
As for your concerns about outsourcing, at GE Aircraft Engines they combined engineering with production right when they started outsourcing everything they could. Then several years later when they realized outsourcing created a lot of problems and started insourcing, they started splitting many of the engineering groups away from production.
I am sure for the actual engineers this makes about zero difference in their day to day lives.