767 CAC

My Job: 767 Fuselage Corrective Action Center

Boeing Commercial Aircraft Group

"From jumbled mess of parts and drawings to flying machine"

This is the 41 section of a 767-400. Note the turning jig. A lot of parts come in from Japan upside down. They are righted in this fixture.

Here they are putting the "Crown" on the airframe. This is the 46 section after being rotate right side up.

Here is the 45 section moving to the final assembly jig. The wings have been installed and the section is complete.

This is the final assembly position of a 767 on the factory floor. Here, all of the pieces come together.

Here, the 767-400ER is being completed in assembly line fashion. Each position marks the installation of different parts. In this position, the engines have just been installed.

The finished product, the 767-400ER ready to be delivered.

I work for Boeing Commercial Aircraft Group in Everett, Washington. I am a Liaison Engineer currently in training. That means I have about a year and a half of training on all of the commercial aircraft that Boeing manufactures in the Puget Sound Area.

For the months of July through August, I rotated through the 767 Fuselage Corrective Action Center which is a drafting department used for the correction of production errors that have occurred as a result of improper engineering drawings or miscommunication. This helped me become familiar with the way Boeing build's it commercial products and in turn gave the drafting department an extra set of hands to complete their endless mounds of work.

A typical day for me started at 4am with the rush to get to the park and ride by 5am where I catch my van pool. I live nearly 50 miles south of the Everett plant and the van pool is a wonderful way to commute the distance and leave the driving to someone else. My day is spent retrieving countless computer generated and hand drafted drawings of the aircraft built by Boeing. Currently, I am assigned to the 767 fuselage responsibility center (767 FRC). There, I deal with all manners of corrections required for the fuselage components.

Typically, my paper trails begin with Engineering Liaison Requests also known to us as "ELRs". These simple little documents create awareness of problems down on the factory floor. From there, the ELR is routed to an investigating engineer or drafter who determines what the problem is. Some errors are workers misusing incorrect drawings and some errors are in the drawings themselves. We investigate both sides of the story and determine what the best corrective action will be. Sometimes, no changes are necessary and other times, drawings must be changed through an elaborate process.

Once the changes have been made, the ELR is documented appropriately and checked by both engineers and drafters for completeness and correctness. If all is well, one more ELR is taken care of and I move onto the next one. Some ELRs take days or even weeks to complete. Most are not as simple as they seem on the surface. Changing drawings often has far reaching implications that are often too troublesome to institute. Many of the ELRs are deemed "Not Cost Effective to Change" and is often discouraging that there is so much red tape involved in making a simple change. The good news is that the stack of ELRs does seem to get shorter by the end of the day.

At 2:30pm, the shift is over and I race to catch the van pool for the 1.5 hour ride home. Again, it is great to have someone else doing the driving. I ride with production workers, tool makers, a SPEEA union board member, and all types of different backgrounds. Some of the conversations on the ride home are pretty amusing. I am the only other Engineer in the pool besides the SPEEA guy but that doesn't seem to create many waves. The more riders, the cheaper the fare. Right now, that is less than gas would cost to make the commute on my own.

So, that's a day in the life of a Boeing Liaison Engineer. I hope you enjoyed the insight.

Boeing 767 Facts

	The 767 is the first widebody jetliner to be stretched twice. The 767-300 is 21 feet (6.43 m) longer than the original 767-200; and the new 767-400ER is 21 feet longer than the 767-300.
	The first 767 entered service in Sept. 8, 1982, since then 767 have flown more than 7.5 million flights, and carried more than two billion passengers.
	The air flowing through a 767-400ER engine at takeoff power could inflate the Goodyear Blimp in seven seconds.
	It takes about 60 gallons (227 l) of fuel per passenger to get from New York to London on board a 767-400ER. The same volume of gasoline would propel an economy car about half of that distance.
	The 767 is the favorite airplane on Atlantic routes; it flies across the Atlantic more frequently than all other jetliners combined.
	The 767-400ER flight deck instrument panel has 82 percent fewer parts than other 767s. By using cast parts, the part count was reduced to 53 from 296. Production hours plummeted to 20 hours from 180 hours.
	If GE CF6-80C2B8F engines were attached to a typical automobile, at takeoff power the car would accelerate from zero to 60 mph (96.5 kph) in less than half a second.
	There are 3.1 million parts in a 767 provided by more than 800 international suppliers.
	The 767 is capable of cruising at altitudes up to 43,000 feet (13,106 m)
	The 767-300ER and 767-400ER hold 23,980 gallons (90,770 l) of fuel - enough to fill 1,200 minivans. It takes only 28 minutes to fill the airplane.
	The noise level of a 767 taking off from a 1.5 mile (3,000 m) runway is about the same as the average street corner traffic noise.
	There are 90 miles (145 km) of electrical wiring in a 767-200ER, 117 miles (188 km) in a 767-300ER and 125 miles (201 km) in a 767-400ER.