to the Charleston area and she moved there. She was working for a company that made automotive drive shafts and heard about Vought while watching the news one night, and how Vought was building a plant in North Charleston to manufacture fuselage sections for a new Boeing airplane. The alpha class met every Saturday starting in late 2005 for training. They had not yet been hired, and were not paid. That was followed by day-to-day training in January 2006. The training eventually included using a tiny autoclave in the employee HUB, which also had a small cafeteria and some classrooms. “We could not yet play with carbon fiber,” Blodgett recalled of the HUB autoclave. “So we used fiberglass.” Her first day on the job at Vought was April 3, 2006. Her first manager was Will Daisley. Today, Daisley is senior operations manager for composite fabrication at Boeing South Carolina. “I’ve seen us grow from what was a green-field site where, frankly, very few of us knew what we were doing, to now, where we have a highly seasoned team,” Daisley said. “We are always looking to improve our process and to find more efficient ways to make our barrels. There are always opportunities to improve the production system.” Before joining Vought, Daisley worked for a small composites company in Florida. He was excited by the opportunity with Vought to help push composite manufacturing technology. “One of the early challenges,” he said, “was understanding and refining the automation of the processes.” Producing that first aft composite fuselage barrel was one of the highlights for Blodgett, who started in production. The first barrel came out of the autoclave shortly before Christmas in 2006. As part of the manufacturing process, the composite material is “bagged” for curing in the autoclave. “It was like unwrapping a present,” Blodgett said of the day the first 787 aft-fuselage barrel was removed 28 Boeing Frontiers from the autoclave. Blodgett, who has been part of the planning for the new autoclave, noted that much has changed, especially since Boeing took over the Vought and Global Aeronautica operations. “The growth has been amazing,” she said. “And our processes are constantly improving. We have learned so much as we have grown. There is so much new technology. We keep getting faster—and better.” New tooling will be needed, too. The aft-fuselage section of the 787-10 is longer and has more windows. “I can’t wait to see that new tooling rolling through our clean room and into the autoclave,” Blodgett said. It took Blodgett and her teammates a couple of months to produce that first composite fuselage barrel for Vought. Today, employees in Aftbody Operations are producing 10 fuselage sections a month. That’s what’s needed to support the program’s production rate of 10 787s per month at the site and in Everett. And North Charleston will more than double its final assembly rate, eventually reaching seven per month by the end of the decade—a far cry from the two buildings sitting at the end of the dirt road that those first employees remember. “Just look at how far we have come,” Blodgett said from the mezzanine above the factory floor in Aftbody Operations, where another fuselage section was about to go into the autoclave. “It’s exciting to be a part of it. The world is open to Boeing South Carolina.” n james.a.wallace4@boeing.com Frontiers is interested in reader stories for future editorial use. Tell us about your own experience working at Boeing South Carolina at boeingfrontiers@boeing.com. Photo: The first South Carolina–built 787 Dreamliner takes to the skies May 23, 2012, on the site’s first production test flight. The site now produces three 787 Dreamliners a month. ala n Marts | Boeing (Continued from Page 25)
Frontiers March 2015 Issue
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