A small manufacturing facility in Kirkland — a clean, high-tech, extensively automated operation — has begun to churn out aerospace parts with a workforce of just two people.
Is that a bright vision of the future for a local industry that currently faces a severe labor shortage? Or a glimpse ahead to a largely peopleless dystopia?
Small aerospace suppliers in the Pacific Northwest, making parts for Boeing and other major manufacturers, have historically been low-wage operations providing mostly unskilled, entry-level jobs inside old and grimy facilities.
Autonomous Machining CEO Mike Dunlop says that, to appeal to the young, aerospace manufacturing has to change and offer “a well-paying, high-technology job rather than a dirty oily, up-to-your-elbows-in-coolant job that no one really wants to do any longer.”
Inside a one-story building in a nondescript Kirkland business park, the veteran aerospace entrepreneur has begun to implement his alternative vision that implies a radically smaller workforce.
In an enclosed box, a computer-controlled lathe machines a metal rod, turning and shaping an airplane cockpit doorknob.
A robot takes the part out, cleans off the coolant and loads it into a separate measuring machine. Tiny rods poke out to touch the doorknob at precise points, verifying that its dimensions meet the specification.
The robot loads the finished part on a tray ready for shipping. This automated production cell can work 24/7, finishing simple parts in minutes with complete precision to whatever design engineers at the customer have specified. No one touches the machines.
This, the first of three similar cells that will be set up at the Kirkland site, has already produced components for satellites and airplanes.
Across the nation, aerospace manufacturing is facing an acute post-pandemic labor crunch. It’s hard to find people to work in the industry’s lower tiers beneath Boeing.
Federal labor statistics show that almost 14,000 workers in Washington state are currently employed in the aerospace sector outside Boeing, providing a critical network of local suppliers to the jet maker.
The Kirkland operation is a step toward how small aerospace machine shops may transform in the years ahead, with far fewer people working inside them.
“We can run 70 hours with no one here and every part perfect,” said Dunlop.
There’s no need to inspect each part, he said, because the machine that measures its dimensions is so precise.
Just two employees — machinist and manufacturing manager Joe Johnson and mechanical engineer Jerry Lugo — will run and monitor the Kirkland operation.
“They probably only need to be here four hours a day,” Dunlop said with a twinkle in his eye directed at his two employees. If anything goes wrong to hold up production, they’ll get a message on their phones.
A customer typically provides a digital model of the part needed. Using machine learning to greatly shorten the process, Lugo and Johnson create the software instructions for the machines to make the part, then test it on a virtual twin of the automated production cell.
That done, they’ll set the machines running to automatically produce real parts, each one a precise replica of the original model. Lugo’s salary this year tops $100,000 and Johnson’s $200,000.
The promise is fewer but more skilled people working clean jobs and earning high salaries.
Jon Holden, district president of the International Association of Machinists union Local 751, is wary but unfazed at the notion.
“You can’t argue against progress,” said Holden. “The modernization of facilities and plants and manufacturing is something that’s been happening for generations. We’ve dealt with that.”
“We used to have 45,000 machinists performing work in our Boeing factories, and now we’re around 30,000,” he said. “But we have capacity for way more airplanes today than
