The issue was actually the door plug scandal. It showed that Boeing's QC was compromised in their factory and they were not able to properly certify that the aircraft were being built as designed.
As an aside this a long talked-about problem with the South Carolina factory, that the place does not follow aerospace standards and practices. The door plug failure was the highest profile QC miss out of that factory.
SC wasn't really involved in this. The fuselage came from Spirit in Kansas, and final assembly happened in Renton.
Noob here, would that not also have potentially been found during routine maintenance inspections?