I’m fascinated about what I’ve observed this week of the
“world of airplane manufacturing.” This orb of metal, machines, mechanics and
mechanisms revolves light-years outside my right-brained universe of words and
how they fit together to make novels. Yet, the idea of rounding up the right
ingredients and the perfect mix of
people to magically transform these four m’s into a big, fat, shiny ship that
plies the skies seems very much akin to the stuff of which novels are made.
I especially enjoyed watching Frank’s reaction to the
precision-made materials supplied to Boeing by our daughter-in-law’s company,
TW Metals. My senses perk up at the
aroma of fresh-cut lumber from the shipping containers the raw materials arrive
in, but Frank gets jazzed by anything involving metal and machines. As a long-term
bystander to the magic of metalwork melting into motorcycles, I get some sense
of the awe Frank displays when he sees a component perfectly smoothed and polished. Read the First Officer’s Log for his take on
the tours.
First Officer’s Log
Okay, so we took two factory tours this week. The first was
through the Boeing Future of Flight Aircraft construction facility. This is
said to be the biggest enclosed building in America. It’s huge! There’s room
enough in one bay to have three 747’s under construction. 747’s are built in place from the wheels up,
one piece at a time and take four months to build. On the other hand, 787’s
arrive in huge prefabricated sections and are bolted together at this facility
in just a few days , rolled out and flown away.
The other tour was just this morning when we were invited to
see daughter-in-law Michell’s workplace at TW Metals. Now the Boeing tour was
cool and fun, but Michell’s tour had it all over it! TW Metals fabricates huge
amounts of aluminum, magnesium, steel, and titanium tubing sections primarily
for Boeing Airplanes and other aircraft manufacturers.
The raw materials arrive in huge long, wooden boxes (I mean
really HUGE) and then are laser cut, mechanically cut, polished, prefab’d to
exact aircraft standards down to the
bazillionithed-of-an-inch specs. Michell
has worked there since the 90s starting way down on the totem pole, working her
way up through about every position, into and out of quality control and into
management. Now she’s pretty much the
HMFIC (military terminology).
As we walked around, she explained the function of every
machine and the destination in the aircraft of every piece of material. Also,
fascinating to me was that the machinery ranged from a 1940’s chop saw that is
still the best machine for a specific job; all the way up to brand-new,
high-tech laser cutters.
I was very impressed by the work atmosphere. Although all
this heavy industrial work was taking place around us, it was a low-intensity
environment. From what Michell’s told us
I get the impression that TWM really values its employees. If they don’t have
an HR motto, they should have one that’s sorta like, “Train, re-train, educate,
compensate, retain.”
You know me; I love everything about big machinery and metal
working, and I would work there (and for her) in a heartbeat.
End First Officer’s entry.
