Boeing to Build 777X Tail at Pierce County S Frederickson Plant

Boeing to build 777X tail at Pierce County’s Frederickson plant

By DOMINIC GATES

The Seattle Times May 15, 2014

In this artist's concept provided by The Boeing Co. is the aerospace company's new family of 777X jetliners, the 777-9X, top, and 777-8X.

BOEING GRAPHIC — AP

Boeing will build the carbon fiber composite tail of the 777X jet at its facility in Frederickson, site manager Dave Moe said Thursday.

Because Frederickson today builds the similar tail of the current 777, the decision is not unexpected. Yet it comes as a relief to Washington state officials after recent news of Boeing moving work out of the region.

“Excellent news,” said Alex Pietsch, director of Gov. Jay Inslee’s aerospace office. “Some folks in Pierce County were concerned about the future of Frederickson, given how much current 777 production takes place there.”

County executive Pat McCarthy admitted she had been worried.

“Of course. This is a competitive business,” she said.

What will that mean for jobs?

“You’ll have to add some new people for a new project,” Moe said. “But we’ll try to keep to the same staffing as much as we can.”

Moe said his manufacturing engineers will have to fit the 777X work in the building, alongside the current 777 and 787 tail work. He hopes it will take up less space than the 787 work.

Frederickson currently makes seven 787 tails a month and Salt Lake City makes three. Moe said Boeing may move more of the 787 work to Salt Lake to make room for the 777X in Frederickson.

Space may also be found by moving tooling and storage areas out of the building.

“We’ll figure it out,” he said.

Boeing Frederickson is split into two distinct units.

In one, about 1,000 workers machine metal wing components for all of Boeing’s jets. In the other, the Composites Manufacturing Center (CMC), some 750 employees working with carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic make the entire tail of the current 777 as well as the vertical fin of the 787 Dreamliner.

At the CMC, the pieces of the 777X tail — both the vertical fin and the horizontal stabilizer — will be fabricated and fully assembled; then wiring, hydraulics and other systems will installed before the tails are delivered to Everett, Moe said.

He said Frederickson’s CMC is the “farm team” that has incubated all of Boeing’s work on composites.

Some workers have moved on from Frederickson to Boeing’s advanced composites research and development facility on Marginal Way.

And experts from Frederickson helped establish a duplicate production line for fabrication of the 787 vertical fin in Salt Lake City – an exact replica of the line in Frederickson.

Moe said Boeing is trying to recruit mechanics and engineers from Frederickson to move up to Everett and help build the giant wing of the 777X.

“This building will provide the people and the knowledge,” he said.

The CMC was established 21 years ago specifically to build the 777 composite tail.

The facility features huge robotic machines that zip along, laying down the carbon fiber tape that is formed into the skins, spars, ribs and skin-stiffening rods that make up the tails.

It has three large autoclaves, high pressure ovens where the parts are baked to hardness.

And it has assembly lines where the skins, spars, ribs and stiffeners are put together to make the main part of the tail, and where leading and trailing edges are added.

When Boeing 10 years ago added the 787 vertical fin work, it used a much leaner assembly process than on the 777 line.

Whereas the 777 tail is put together hanging vertically on edge within large tooling fixtures, with the mechanics drilling from either side, the 787 tailfin is built while laid out horizontally, like a table, and held in place by smaller, more flexible tooling.

On the 777, temporary pilot holes are drilled prior to assembly of the wing and mechanics must finish the drilling by hand later. On the 787, a precision automated machine pre-drills full-size holes to a tight tolerance.

Moe said the build plan for the 777X tail — which will be a little bigger than the current 777 tail — is not clear yet, because the engineering design has just begun.

But he expects to use elements of the 787 manufacturing process and to add automation to further evolve the process.

The tail work adds to Washington state’s substantial win on 777X against formal bids from 14 competing states.

After major concessions from the machinists union, Boeing in January committed to do 777X final assembly in Everett. It has begun construction of a new building there, where it will fabricate the jet’s new composite wing.“To see elements of the 777X being built in other parts of the state is certainly welcome,” Pietsch said.