the main fuselage. It starts out as a 5,400-pound (2,450-kilogram) chunk of titanium, then is milled down to a fraction of its size. All of the excess titanium chips are recycled for reuse. When Boeing originally purchased the machining facility in 1974, it was fronted by palm trees encased in clear, plastic tubing, planted by its California owners. The trees didn’t survive, but Boeing has doubled the building space, adding a state-of-the-art chemicalprocessing center in 2013, and increased the workforce to more than 1,600, all of this marking the company’s long-term commitment to Portland. Relationships are everything on the spacious 87-acre (35-hectare) campus, enhanced by an incident- and injury-free mindset, said Mike Starr, Boeing Portland general manager. Turnover is low; apprentices are groomed for permanent jobs, preferred over outside candidates. “It’s 10 times better for us to hire from within,” said Don Hendrickson, senior finance and business operations manager. Starr himself is proof someone can move all the way through the ranks and assume Portland’s highest leadership role. He’s a 25-year Boeing employee who started out as a liaison engineer. “One of my biggest motivations is stability,” Starr said. “There’s a level of trust here, that people have a future. Everything looked at is for the company and the employee. They can see the possibility of a future job.” Boeing Portland has vigorously pursued continuous improvement in efficiency and productivity to stay competitive in the global marketplace. This has taken the manufacturing plant down an interesting path. Portland, in consultation with the University of Kentucky School of Engineering and its group of thought-provoking former Toyota executives, reached a somewhat surprising conclusion in assessing plant operations: The employees still Photo: Tuan Ton, left, and Khem Khuth, both machinists, load a 747 flap track onto a gantry mill machine. 26 BOEING FRONTIERS
Frontiers April 2015 Issue
To see the actual publication please follow the link above