EVERETT – The Boeing Co. has a new weapon in its battle against Airbus – fresh espresso.
It’s not part of a scheme to use heavy doses of caffeine to boost worker productivity, insisted Ross Bogue, the senior manager at Boeing’s Everett site.
Instead, it’s the first step in an effort to make living and working inside the massive factory just a bit nicer, he said.
The moves will “provide an atmosphere and a climate for us to have more fun at work,” Bogue said. “It will be a more inviting environment for ourselves and our customers.”
On Monday, Bogue and Tully’s Coffee chief executive Tom O’Keefe sliced through a blue ribbon and formally opened the first of three Tully’s shops that will open this spring inside Boeing’s Everett factory. A fourth is planned for Boeing’s delivery center, across Highway 526 at Paine Field.
The first store is alongside the 747 assembly line on the factory’s west end, occupying an old cafeteria site that’s been closed for several years.
The Boeing shop carries a wider range of heartier foods than usual for a Tully’s – sandwiches and main-course salads, for example. But otherwise, “we still do what we do in a typical Tully’s store,” O’Keefe said. “It just happens to be in the world’s largest building.”
The stores offer a great opportunity for Tully’s, O’Keefe said. The company expects the stores to be quite profitable, given the traffic they’ll get, he said. More than 20,000 people work at Boeing’s Everett site.
Boeing should also benefit, Bogue said.
The coffee shops are part of a broader effort in Everett that Boeing is calling “Future Factory.”
Along with the Tully’s stores, Boeing is planning a “huge” remodel of two of the factory’s cafeterias along with an overhaul of the menus, Everett spokeswoman Debbie Heathers said. The company also plans to establish an employee services center, which will include a full branch of the Boeing Employees Credit Union, a Boeing Store and a range of other features including drop-off services for dry cleaning and video disk rentals.
Boeing also is converting more of the unused space in the factory for engineering offices, with the goal of bringing more work groups together. And the company is creating “collaboration areas” – conference rooms with large windows overlooking the factory floor, where groups of workers can come together to brainstorm problems.
The overall goal is to “take our working together to higher and higher levels,” Bogue said.
The moves are patterned on steps Boeing already has taken with its Renton site as part of the “March to the Lake” restructuring of operations at the 737 factory, Bogue said.
Those moves already have paid off with improved employee morale, he said. Workers in Renton are “energized,” he said. “They’re focused on the product.”
Boeing’s been working on its Everett “Future Factory” plan for 18 months, said Keith Shirley, who was one of the planners.
“It’s part of a cultural change” for the company, he said. “It’s something we haven’t done well in the past.”
For decades at Boeing, “all the focus has been out here on the tools, the planes,” Shirley said. The company is now trying to change that perception, by telling workers that “now that we’ve got you in the big box, let’s make life a little nicer for you.”
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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