Captain's Log 20-15-06-09

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.