An inside look at Cessna's new single-engine assembly site.
Yes, Cessna had promised it would resume production of piston singles just as soon as product liability reform was enacted. Yes, Congress passed the General Aviation Revitalization Act, the triggering tort reform legislation that would free manufacturers of product liability concerns once an aircraft reaches 18 years of age. Yes, Cessna had even announced — on December 21, 1994 — that it had chosen Independence, Kansas, as the site of its new single-engine manufacturing facility. And yes, the entire general aviation community had responded with an optimism it hadn't seen in nearly 16 years. Leading the cheers was AOPA, which had worked hard in the cooperative effort to pass the new product liability laws.
But there was another reason for AOPA's upbeat mood. We have dibs on the first new 172 to roll off the assembly line. The first new 182, also. We will be giving these airplanes away as our sweepstakes prizes for 1996 and 1997. The lucky winner, selected from the ranks of any new, renewing, or new-member-sponsoring AOPA member, will get the good news in January 1996. Later that year, the prize airplane will roll out the door, and AOPA's First New 172 will take to the skies. Maybe you'll be pilot in command.
But even with all the hoopla surrounding the legislation's passage, the site selection, and the anticipation of a sweepstakes winner, a kind of awkward silence descended. By February, it seemed as though the normally voluble Cessna had become suddenly quiet. What did this mean? The skepticism of a year ago resurfaced. Would Cessna really keep its promise to start the production of piston singles?
Then, on the afternoon of February 22, the telephone rang in AOPA President Phil Boyer's office. It was a senior Cessna executive calling. "Just wanted to let you know first," he told Boyer, "that the Textron board of directors has just enthusiastically endorsed the single-engine program as outlined by Russ [Meyer, Cessna's chairman and CEO]."
With this formal go-ahead, any lingering doubts were erased. The switch had been officially flipped, and Cessna moved ahead with new purpose. In particular, a great deal of renewed emphasis was brought to bear on the Independence plans.
Actually, work had been progressing in this area for some time, and always with the board's tacit endorsement. A single-engine task force had been created in June 1993. Last summer, Cessna formed a site selection team. Working under a proviso that the new plant be located in Kansas, the team quickly came up with a preliminary list of 16 candidate communities. These were Augusta, El Dovado, Emporia, Hutchinson, Liberal, Great Bend, Hays, Pittsburg, Parsons, Independence, Manhattan, Newton, Pratt, Salina, Winfield, and Wichita.
By October, that list was pared to five cities: Emporia, Hays, Manhattan, Pittsburg, and Independence. A spirited competition for the Cessna plant soon developed among the competitors, and local media all across Kansas covered any site selection news with great gusto.
Independence won because it best met Cessna's six big criteria. First of all, the winning city had to be able to underwrite high-quality industrial revenue bonds. The bonds would be essential for attracting investors and raising construction money. Independence would not only float bonds, it was actually willing to pay Cessna $20 million to move there. This $20 million cash incentive program would be spread over 10 to 13 years. It's linked to construction milestones through 1996 and to employment levels after that. The cash begins to flow with a pair of $2 million annual payments. The money for this incentive will be raised by a retail sales tax increase of one cent on the dollar. The citizens of Independence, eager for new jobs and the revenue they'll bring, endorsed the new sales tax in a special referendum; 88 percent of voters backed the tax hike. Independence also provided the land for the plant site at no cost.
Of course, a winning city had to have an airport with very specific attributes. The main runway had to be at least 4,000 feet long — 5,000 feet, preferably — had to be able to handle 14,000 flights per year, and had to have an ILS. Independence has two runways (17-35 and 4-22), each 5,500 feet long and 150 feet wide. While the airport has VOR and NDB approaches, there is no ILS. Not yet, anyway. Cessna says it is willing to pay for an ILS installation, so it looked away on this particular requirement.
Of course, utilities are essential, and Independence once again bent over backwards to accommodate Cessna. The city fathers agreed to bring all utility lines within five feet of the new Cessna facility. Moreover, a new water supply system had recently been installed at the Independence airport, and a new wastewater treatment plant is scheduled for construction. On top of all this, the interstate highway between Wichita and Independence is scheduled for widening and resurfacing. The current two-hour drive that supply trucks will have to make between Cessna's Wichita facilities and the new Independence plant may shrink to as little as an hour and a half — another benefit.
Cessna also wanted to avoid any potential environmental issues. While the company plans on complying with any and all environmental regulations, it didn't want to pick a site with any environmentally sensitive areas nearby. Once again, Independence filled the bill.
The new plant will also require an adequate labor pool and specialized training necessary to prepare workers for their new jobs. Independence, a town of 13,523, is typical of many Kansas communities in its educational, employment, and income demographics. Translated, that means that good jobs are scarce, and that its population is more than up to the challenge of factory work.
While Independence got the nod, John Moore, Cessna's senior vice president of human resources and one of the five members of Cessna's site selection task force, was emphatic when he said, "There wasn't any single reason why we chose Independence. It was the whole combination of features that attracted us. Virtually every other community came at us with equally impressive incentives...but none of them came together quite the same way. The only thing we knew for sure was that we were going to stay in Kansas. Cessna's always been a Kansas company, and we also felt we owed it to the Kansas congressional delegation that was so instrumental in getting the Revitalization Act passed."
Moore used to be an executive with the Collins Division of Rockwell International. There, he had pivotal roles in the construction of four new plants. The Independence move doesn't seem to faze him. In an interview, Moore sounded extremely positive about Cessna's new facility and outlined a very ambitious employee training program.
"First of all, there won't be just one plant at Independence," Moore explains. "There'll be three. One for manufacturing and assembly, one for paint, and one for flight operations. The total floor space should come to about 480,000 to 500,000 square feet, or almost as big as Cessna's current Pawnee and former Strother Field facilities put together." (Strother Field, in Strother, Kansas, was where most 152s and 172s were built until production ended in 1986.)
Word has it that the Independence plants will take up 60 of the airport's 1,433 acres. There's plenty of room for expansion, another probable reason for the Independence selection. In fact, 300 additional adjoining acres are immediately available to Cessna and may have already been staked out.
Cessna spokesmen won't give us a look at any architectural renditions of the plants just yet, claiming that plans haven't been finalized. They won't even say where the plants will be located on the airport grounds. "I think they'll be at the northeast side of the airport, north of the terminal building and adjacent to runways 17 and 35, but none of that's final," Moore said.
As for employees, Moore says that four Kansas schools — Coffeyville Community College, Independence Community College, Pittsburg State University, and the Southeast Kansas Vocational Technical School — have nominated representatives to help Cessna develop training programs. "This will be a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility," Moore says, "and we'll be using the latest ideas in manufacturing."
Delegates from the Cessna single-engine restart program have paid visits to the Ford Motor Company factory in Sharonville, Ohio, and the Saturn automobile assembly plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, to learn how those firms have streamlined their work processes. The Ford and Saturn examples provoked a nine-month internal study at Cessna. Based on that and other input, Moore says that Cessna has decided to use self-directed work teams, just-in-time inventory control, and a new kind of high-involvement work force.
Compared to the old-fashioned way of manufacturing, where bosses tell workers what to do and how to do it, the self-directed team approach is radically different. Under this scheme, workers are teamed according to work projects. It will be the workers who decide how the teams will function, what procedures they'll use, and what and how much materials are ordered. As the team concept matures, it's expected that workers will also make their own budgeting and personnel decisions. The goal, of course, is vastly greater efficiency, less cost, and a better motivated work force.
Six months before the manufacturing facility is built, Cessna hopes to have finished a new 8,500-square-foot training facility, designed to prepare prospective employees for this brave new work environment. Training "modules" will focus on sheet metal skills, blueprint reading, shop math, and various specialized tasks, as well as practice with teaming arrangements.
While the plant will create 1,000 new factory-related jobs in Independence (and 1,000 more in Wichita), its economic effects extend far beyond employee paychecks. Moore asserts that 1,000 other jobs will be created in Independence and that there will be a "$33-million to $39- million increase in annual personal income" in the Independence area. "Overall, the household financial return on this investment by Independence will be on the order of 16:1, or $16 for every dollar a family puts in," Moore said.
Cessna officials swear they're on track for a groundbreaking later this month. That's big talk, considering the official claim that the company doesn't know what the buildings will look like or where they'll be located. We'll learn all that at the groundbreaking.
Still, a visit to Cessna leaves you with the feeling of tremendous corporate optimism. Part is attributable to the progress on the Citation X project, which is nearing completion. But the single-engine team also exudes an unmistakable aura of infectious good morale. ("We want to do business in Independence for 40 years or more," Moore intones.)
Whatever the current status of Cessna's single-engine pipeline, what matters here is that the game has finally begun. And when those incredibly efficient workers turn out that first Skyhawk, that very historic airplane could be yours.
