Frontiers September 2014 33 in the field,” said John Locke, who has assembled CSEL radios at Smithfield for the past year. “That’s a pretty big responsibility,” he added. “You’re not working just for yourself anymore. You’re working for a warfighter who has no idea who you are, but they trust in the product because it’s coming from our company name—so they know it’s going to work for them.” In addition to CSEL, other longtime and new programs are filling both the main Smithfield facility’s 65,000 square feet (6,000 square meters) of space and Lemont Furnace’s 36,000 square feet (3,300 square meters). The Lemont Furnace facility includes a 10-member engineering and design team. Shawn Johnson, who leads the team, said recent efforts to “co-market” Smithfield’s manufacturing capabilities with his team’s design and engineering services have led to still more interest around Boeing. “This place is unique not only in Boeing but also within the Navy and acoustics community,” Johnson said of Lemont Furnace. “Not many places have an environmentally controlled in-water test facility that is this big and has the capabilities we bring. Once people realize what we have here, we can do more collaboration with other groups that have an acoustic design requirement or an acoustics test requirement. We’re also fortunate to have a small group of great engineers here.” Whether they work at the Smithfield or Lemont Furnace location, employees use words such as “like family” to describe the work environment. Heather Smith, an accountant at the Smithfield facility, has been there since it was opened by Argon ST. “Now that we’re growing, it is a great opportunity,” she said. “For me, being a local person, there wasn’t much opportunity in this area without moving away. We never thought we’d have an opportunity here like this. That’s what I consider unique, that Boeing actually came to a small town like this.” n richard.esposito@boeing.com PHOTOS: (Opposite page) Shown performing product inspections at Smithfield, Pa., are (clockwise from top left) Earl Forsythe, left, and Barb Stossel; Jackie Bryner; and Clifford Tracy. (This page, from top) Jeff Evans, left, and Tonya Potteiger inspect the workmanship of the main electrical distribution center for an aircraft; Don Yingling terminates a fiber-optic test cable.
Frontiers September 2014 Issue
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