Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Seattle, WA: Boeing - Day 1

Thursday, January 10th

We woke up very early (~4 am) to catch the 5 am bus to the airport for our flight to Seattle, WA. Once we arrived in Seattle, we headed straight to our hotel to drop our bags off and then immediately went to the Boeing facility in Renton, WA where they build the 737. We had a nice mezzanine tour of the facility and then got to travel down to the production floor where we got an up close and personal view of the 737 mid-production. After a brief lunch and panel discussion, our class was split in two and one half was presented with information on the 737 engineering efforts with lean and the other was able to go visit another Boeing facility where they manufacture the wings and fuselage for the F-22. I was on the latter tour and got to see a very impressive facility that manufactures a very impressive fighting machine. The facility houses lots of composite materials and titanium that are in use throughout the plant and we were given a nice tour of their amazingly large composite manufacturing facilities including a massive autoclave (a pressurized oven to cure the composites) – one of two in the facility.

After the tour, we were treated to a tour of the Museum of Flight and then were hosted to dinner and a happy hour at the same museum. Some good socializing with various LFM grads and Boeing managers helped close out the evening as we were all very exhausted from a VERY long day.

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