New 787 plants a boon for economy

CHARLESTON, S.C. — U.S. Air Force C-17 cargo planes made by The Boeing Co. depart regularly from the airport here headed for Iraq.

Starting next year, much bigger cargo planes, modified 747s known as Large Cargo Freighters, will fly out of the same airport and head for Everett. They will carry much of the composite fuselage of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner.

“The best job in Charleston is going to be the popcorn stand vendor when those LCFs start flying and all the school kids come out to watch,” said C.P. “Newt” Newton, vice president and general manager of Global Aeronautica, a joint venture between the Italian company Alenia and Texas-based Vought Aircraft Industries.

Vought and Alenia will build more than 60 percent of the 787 fuselage.

Two new plants about 200 yards apart have been built for production and assembly of 787 fuselage sections. The land is adjacent to what serves as a joint Air Force base and Charleston’s civilian airport.

“We are at the 2-yard line and ready to cross that goal line and score a touchdown,” said Mark Dickey, general manager of the Vought production plant.

The first fuselage sections are scheduled to leave the Charleston airport for Everett on the Large Cargo Freighter early in the second quarter of 2007, Newton said. First flight of the 787 will be later that year, possibly August or September, with All Nippon Airways of Japan taking delivery of the first plane in May 2008.

First for industry

The 787 represents a technological leap over today’s jetliners. It will be the industry’s first large commercial jetliner with a composite fuselage — almost the entire airframe is made of carbon fiber. It will be much more fuel efficient than current jets.

Boeing’s manufacturing plan for the Dreamliner is just as revolutionary. It calls for Boeing’s partners in Italy, Japan, South Carolina and in Wichita, Kan., to supply large completed structures that will be joined together during final assembly of the plane in the Everett plant. This will reduce the time required in final assembly and make for a more efficient production system, according to Boeing.

“The 787 represents the innovation of our industry,” said Vincenzo Caiazo, chief operating officer of Alenia’s North American subsidiary.

Even Boeing’s supply chain is part of the 787 innovation march, he said.

The 50-50 partnership between Alenia and Vought, he said, represents a new business model in an industry where the two companies are usually fierce competitors.

“It is a novel relationship. Global Aeronautica will be remembered as a pioneer in the aerospace arena.”

Scott Strode, vice president of 787 program development, said the initial batch of 787s will probably spend about a month in final assembly. As lessons are learned and as production rates are increased, Boeing should be able to get that down to about six days, he said. The goal would be to one day cut that in half, to no more than three days in final assembly.

Boeing’s 777 requires about 18 days in final assembly today — and that kind of production efficiency has come only after some 500 planes have been delivered since 1995.

“We still think we can eventually get it down to three days,” Strode said of the 787 assembly time.

Fuselage assembly

Vought will manufacture the aft fuselage — two sections totaling about 38 feet in length that will be flown to Everett as one piece.

Alenia will make two center fuselage sections in Italy — one just aft of the wing and the crown section that goes above the wing. Those two sections will be flown to Charleston to be mated in the Global Aeronautica plant with two sections manufactured in Nagoya, Japan, by Fuji and Kawasaki heavy industries. Fuji will make the center wing box and Kawasaki a fuselage section just in front of the wing, as well as the main landing gear wheel well that attaches to the Fuji wing box.

When the Italian and Japanese elements are connected in Charleston, the fuselage assembly that is flown to Everett will be 84 feet long and 18 feet in diameter.

Alenia also is manufacturing in Italy the 787 horizontal stabilizer on the tail. It will arrive in Charleston with the two Alenia sections before being flown to Everett, probably on the same plane that carries the Vought-made aft fuselage.

The composite wings, from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, will be flown from Nagoya to Everett. The forward fuselage, including the nose and cockpit, will be supplied by Spirit AeroSystems in Wichita. Spirit acquired Boeing’s commercial operations in Wichita last year.

All these large pieces of the Dreamliner will be flown to Everett on the modified 747s, which have a bulging upper fuselage and are being modified in Taiwan. Boeing will use three of the cargo planes to transport the Dreamliner assemblies and may need more, depending on the ultimate production rate that is still being decided.

The Large Cargo Freighter will become a familiar sight around the Seattle area later this summer when flight testing of the first plane gets under way at Boeing Field.

Charleston plant

In Charleston, the Vought production plant is a just-completed 342,000-square-foot building on 240 acres of what a year ago was forest next to the airport. Both it and the Global Aeronautica plant were built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane or a 7.2 magnitude earthquake.

Manufacturing of the Vought composite sections will be done in a 70,000-square-foot “clean room” by an automatic fiber placement machine. Robotic arms will apply layers of composite material to a contoured tool surface.

A traditional aluminum fuselage would require many pieces of metal held together by thousands of rivets and fasteners. For the 787 fuselage, large one-piece composite barrels will be produced.

From the clean room the fuselage sections will be moved into an autoclave for curing. It measures 30 feet in diameter and is 75 feet long — the world’s largest autoclave by volume, according to Vought.

“This is essentially a boiler, just like a steamship,” Newton said of the autoclave, which cooks the composite material under a pressure of about 195 pounds per square inch and a temperature of more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Two 700 horsepower fans circulate the hot air in the autoclave.

The curing process will take eight to 10 hours.

Windows and doors will be cut out of the fuselage sections and an ultrasonic machine will send sound waves through the composite layers to make sure there were no manufacturing flaws.

Finally, Vought workers will “stuff” the fuselage sections with wiring, systems and electronics.

Workers in the Global Aeronautics building will do the same thing with the fuselage sections from Japan and Italy. As much as possible, this kind of work will be completed here, not in Everett.

Plants provide 700 jobs

For the first seven planes, the two Vought fuselage sections will be joined in the Vought plant. After that, they will be joined in the Global Aeronautica plant.

At 350,000 square feet, the Global Aeronautica plant is about the same size as the Vought building.

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said recently the $560 million complex is the second-largest single industrial investment in the state since BMW built an auto plant here in the early 1990s.

The state needs these kinds of jobs. An article this month in The Economist magazine painted an unflattering picture of South Carolina, a state with one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates that ranks near the bottom of the 50 states in per capita income and SAT scores.

The two plants eventually will hire 700 or more workers. The average wage will be about $50,000, though that includes management jobs. That’s a very good wage for the Charleston area, whose main industry is tourism.

About 50 people work at the Vought plant now. That will increase to about 100 by the end of the year and peak at around 375 in 2011.

Employment at the Global plant will eventually peak at about 400. Fewer than 50 work there now.

Workers for both plants will be trained at a local technical college as well as on the site. The training center next to the Global plant even has a working miniature autoclave. The basic training program takes about 12 weeks.

About six months ago, the companies held a jobs fair in Charleston. They expected 600 people might show up. More than 3,000 came. Job applications were gone within 45 minutes.

BUILDING THE DREAMLINER

In new factories in Japan, Italy and South Carolina, production is about to begin on The Boeing Co.’s 787 Dreamliner. Boeing recently took a dozen journalists on a tour of the global factories where the composite wings and fuselage of the Dreamliner will be manufactured.

Tuesday: At factories in Japan, Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner begins to take shape, representing a new way of building planes.

Wednesday: Europe is considered Airbus country. But on land that used to be a grove of olive trees in Italy, a new plant will soon be building large sections of Boeing’s 787.

Thursday: In Charleston, S.C., the fuselage gets assembled before heading to Boeing’s Everett plant.