Performance in plane site Boeing’s expanding presence in Utah revs up employees, and machines, for business BY DAN RALEY | PHOTOS BY BOB FERGUSON B They created clever Old West logos utch and Sundance work side by side in a shiny, new Boeing factory in West Jordan, Utah. They look nothing like the legendary Western characters for whom they are named or the actors who later portrayed the historic duo on film. They are large, white robots. They each can drill a hole on a 787 horizontal stabilizer, measure it and countersink it, insert a fastener in it, and then torque the fastener. They have reduced three days of work to a single shift and, by diminishing repetitive and strenuous tasks, have helped employees grow in new ways while eliminating the potential for injuries, according to site leaders. Employees who occupy the West Jordan plant treat the mechanical Butch and Sundance as captivating workplace fixtures. for them. They named them, relying on geographical familiarity to choose from among 80 sets of employeesubmitted suggestions. “Butch Cassidy was from Utah and Robert Redford the actor who played the Sundance Kid lives here,” West Jordan factory manager Darren Walker pointed out. The robots are just two of the more visible elements that make up Boeing Salt Lake—three Fabrication plants that rely heavily on innovation. Another element is a veteran workforce that has been successfully adapting to repeated change over three decades, such as learning new skills to facilitate the production of composite airplane parts. “Management started out by telling us there wasn’t anything we couldn’t do,” said Chad Simpson, a OCTOBER 2016 | 11
Frontiers October 2016 Issue
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