BFGoodrich Aerospace, a division of the big Charlotte, N.C.-based BFGoodrich Co. that began making carbon brake disks for aircraft brakes at a new West Plains plant last summer, has made a smooth landing here and is on schedule to meet its growth projections.


The company expects to begin work next month on a planned expansion of its manufacturing facility here that will more than double the size of the complex to 140,000 square feet of floor space and will allow the plant to expandas plannedthe scope of work that it currently handles, says John A. Adamchik, director of operations here. That expansion, which likely will take about two years to build, is the second phase of the companys initial plans here. Together, the two phases will cost about $66.5 million.


The plant, which currently employs just 38 people, is expected to employ 250 workers by 2005. That level is dependent on the market, but every indication so far tells us that well meet our target, Adamchik says.


BFGoodrich expects to employ more than 50 workers here by the end of this year. He says that the company has been working with the Washington state Job Service program and has had no problem finding workers here.


To hit its targeted employment levels, though, Adamchik says that demand for carbon brakes must continue to rise, as the company expects.


We dont believe in hiring a bunch of people and then laying them off, Adamchik says. He doesnt believe that the companys Pueblo, Colo., plant has laid off an employee in its 12-year history.


Product demand levels that the company has forecasted look as though they will be reached, because new commercial aircraft with carbon brakesas opposed to steel brakesare continually being produced, Adamchik says. Also, the life of a commercial aircraft is between 25 and 30 years, which means that the carbon brakes on such aircraft will need periodic replacements. He says the brake-replacement cycle on aircraft varies depending on the type of aircraft and the number of landings that a plane performs.


BFGoodrich Co., as a whole, supplied over half of all the brakes needed for new commercial aircraft in 1999, Adamchik says. It also recently received a contract worth about $30 million over the next several years from the U.S. Air Force to upgrade more than 750 F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft with carbon brakes.


That contract isnt expected to impact the Spokane plant directly, since the plant here makes disks only for commercial, regional, and business aircraft. Once the second phase of the plant here is completed, however, the companys total capacity to produce carbon disks is expected to increase by about 80 percent, freeing up capacity at the companys other carbon disk plants in Pueblo, and Santa Fe, N.M., to meet the demand under the F-16 contract, the company says.


Adamchik declines to disclose how many carbon disks are produced here.


Once the planned expansion here is completed, the facility will handle much more of the process of making carbon brake disks than it currently does. Rather than starting with doughnut-shaped pieces of fiber created at BFGoodrichs Pueblo plant, it will receive raw oxidized polyacrylonitrile fiber, which is the material from which those pieces are made. That raw fiber will be run through a loom to create woven sheets of fiber, and that material will be cut into the doughnut-shaped pieces. Those pieces next will be taken to the furnace deck here for carbonization, as is done now.


Six months from start to end


After the doughnut-shaped pieces of woven fiber have been through the carbonization process, which involves slowly heating them at extremely high temperatures, they emerge in a solid state. Those solid disks then are machined and sanded until theyre smooth for assembly into airplane brakes. Adamchik says that it currently takes about six months for a carbon disk to make its way through the manufacturing process.


Once the disks have been machined and sanded here, they are sent to another BFGoodrich facility for final machining. They then are assembled into carbon brakes and shipped to customers. Adamchik says BFGoodrich supplies aircraft manufacturers such as Boeing Co., Airbus Industrie, and Embraer, as well as aircraft operators, such as American Airlines and Federal Express.


As part of the expansion project here, a textile building will be added to the campus, and a textile line will be installed in that building to enable the plant to weave the fiber from raw material into the sheets.


The BFGoodrich campus here currently includes three buildingsan administrative building, a boiler building that contains all of the utilities used by the plant, and a building that houses six furnaces, a computerized control room, and a machine shop.


Adamchik says the textile building wasnt constructed earlier because the Pueblo plant had adequate capacity to weave and cut material for the Spokane plant. As demand for carbon disks continues to grow, though, the Pueblo plant is expected to exhaust its capacity, and the Spokane plant will be required to weave its own sheets of fiber, freeing up the Pueblo plant to meet its own needs.


Also as part of the expansion project here, the complexs furnace building will be more than doubled in size and another 12 furnaces will be installed over the next five years, giving the plant a total of 18 furnacesall of which will be several feet deep. When the plant opened here in July, it had only four furnaces. Since then, another two furnaces have been added.


The carbon machine shop, located within the furnace building, also will be expanded, and another three boilers will be installed in the boiler building, giving it six boilers in all. The boilers provide steam thats used as part of the carbonization process.


Lydig Construction Inc., of Spokane, already has been selected as the construction manager for the plant expansion. Lydig also handled construction of the initial 50,000-square-foot plant, which was completed in 10 months, Adamchik says. He says that a contract for site excavation for the plant expansion should be awarded by the middle of next month, and construction should get under way by the end of this year.


At this point, Phase II isnt scheduled to be on a fast track like Phase I. For Phase I, we just needed to get up and be operational as soon as we could to help support the increased demand for carbon disks, Adamchik says.