October 2015 27 great ideas Some of Boeing’s most valuable inventions come from employees on the factory floor By El izabeth S. Davis Chris Black knows about mislaid tools. For more than 27 years, he has been involved in many challenging searches to find them. “Sometimes during assembly, employees accidentally leave behind tools and flashlights,” said Black, inspection team leader for the Boeing Field Nondestructive Test Lab in Seattle. “If we don’t recover them, they can roll around, and that can chew away at paint, corrode or cause other damage.” Once, he was called to the Boeing factory in Renton, Wash., to help locate a half-inch-long (1 centimeter) Apex tip, which resembles a Phillips screwdriver tip, that fell behind a flight-deck instrument panel. The build team had stopped work to ensure the small piece of foreign object debris, or FOD, was found before the airplane moved on, and Black had to remove the newly installed insulation blankets before he could find the tip. Confident that there was a better, faster and cheaper way to find misplaced tools, Black set out to detect tools from outside an airplane’s skin. Last year, he figured out how to magnetize tools without interfering with an airplane’s structure or instrumentation. Magnetizing tools shortened searches from days to minutes. Although the idea seemed simple, Boeing’s intellectual property experts said Black’s invention was novel. So he submitted it earlier this year for patent protection; the innovation is now a pending patent. “While I didn’t initially think of myself as an inventor, I knew from my training and certifications—and especially from my factory experience—that this idea could be a winner,” he said. “I was confident it would be something we could use on the line.” Boeing employees have been inventing and improving on designs, ideas and tools since the company began building airplanes nearly a century ago. While the invention glory often goes to the engineers and rocket scientists in the lab, some of the most valuable inventions are developed by people producing the aircraft, said Wayne Howe, a Technical Fellow and planner and strategist for Intellectual Property Management. Traditionally, filing for patents on ideas that emerge from the factory floor hasn’t always been a priority. But Howe said this perspective is changing. “It’s not only engineers but a wide variety of technical and manufacturing employees who are coming up with great ideas. Now we’re doing a better job of capturing them.” Associate Technical Fellow Li Chang sees the spirit of innovation everywhere he looks. An electrical engineer in Boeing Commercial Airplanes, Chang is also the leader of the newly formed Boeing South Carolina Intellectual Property Committee and technical liaison for the Intellectual Property Management team in South Carolina. “In the past two years there’s been an exponential increase in inventors,” Chang said. “That’s because of an increase in engagement and involvement in creating a culture of innovation throughout Boeing—especially in production.” Employees from across the company are submitting invention disclosures in record numbers. Boeing South Carolina has seen its rate jump from 28 individual inventors submitting disclosures in 2011, to as many as 129 inventors during the first six months of 2015. Across the enterprise, the number of individual employees submitting invention disclosures reflects a similar trajectory: from 1,883 in 2011 to more than 2,700 in 2014. And, it’s not only engineers but also employees from Employee Development, Quality, Human Resources, Final Assembly and Delivery who are tendering these submissions. Chang attributes the local uptick in engagement to committee outreach. He said similar efforts are occurring across Boeing with favorable results. “People are learning more about Photo: At Boeing South Carolina, Li Chang, left, and Debbie Errazo review composite panels with cutouts for doors and windows that are more precise, thanks to an invention of Errazo’s. Joshua Drake
Frontiers October 2015 Issue
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