By Bryan Corliss
Herald Writer
The Boeing Co. will vacate its Harbour Pointe facility by the end of 2002, the company announced Friday.
About 850 people — including developmentally delayed people at a sheltered workshop — work at the Mukilteo building. Most of them will be transferred to buildings at Boeing’s Everett site, according to an e-mail sent to employees by Everett site manager John Quinlivan.
The move is tied to Boeing’s ongoing attempts to consolidate operations and is not connected to the layoffs in the Commercial Airplane Group, Boeing spokesman Ed McGinn said.
Some layoffs could occur if the consolidations create redundancies, Quinlivan’s e-mail to employees said.
The goal is efficiency, Quinlivan added.
"We believe that the movement of these operations to their new locations will make our operations more efficient, and thus make the company more competitive."
Boeing had unused room in Everett, McGinn said, and moving the operations "inside the fence" eliminates problems with hauling components from site to site. That should reduce costs and improve the delivery schedule.
The first groups will start moving within a few weeks, McGinn said. However, the company still is looking for new locations for some of the groups, including the sheltered workshop.
"We’ll continue our contract with them," he said. "They’ll just be in a different place."
Among the groups that will move soon is a buyer-furnished equipment unit that handles seats and other equipment that airlines buy from other suppliers, and a metals/vinyl unit that does work on interior panels and compartments. Both of them will move to buildings inside the main Everett site.
A research and development unit also will move to Everett, although a final site hasn’t been picked, McGinn said.
Boeing still is studying when to move an assembly group, but "it is anticipated that a good amount of this work will move to the Everett site," Quinlivan told employees.
The lot-time assembly group, which does table-top work on smaller components, will complete its move to Auburn this year. That move first was announced in August 2000.
Boeing has not yet decided what to do with the Harbour Pointe site once it is vacant, McGinn said.
In a related move, Boeing announced Friday that it will move its wire shop again this year. Last year, the company announced plans to consolidate its separate Renton and Everett wire shops into the Bomarc Building in Everett. The move was intended to streamline operations.
But with the current production slowdown following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, Boeing has decided to move the wire shops in with the interiors shop workers at the main Everett site.
You can call Herald Writer Bryan Corliss at 425-339-3454
or send e-mail to corliss@heraldnet.com.
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