New plant in France extends Spirit's global reach

ST. NAZAIRE, France — At Spirit AeroSystems' new plant in St. Nazaire, three clocks on a conference room wall are set to three different times: local time, Wichita time, and Kinston, N.C., time.

The clocks are an outward sign of how tightly the three plants are linked as they take on an all-new program, the Airbus A350XWB (extra wide body).

" (The site) requires an immense amount of coordination with Wichita and Kinston," said Jeff Russell, senior operations manager for the St. Nazaire plant, who is on temporary assignment from Wichita.

The nearly 60,000-square-foot French facility — small in comparison with other Spirit operations — is dedicated to the A350 program.

Kinston will ship six center fuselage assemblies to St. Nazaire for assembly.

The complete fuselage section — 65 feet long and 9,000 pounds when assembled — will be taken to the nearby Airbus plant.

Spirit won the contract in 2008 and opened plants in Kinston and St. Nazaire last year.

St. Nazaire is six hours ahead of Kinston and seven hours ahead of Wichita time. So in the mornings, Russell works with his French team.

"By the time we get back from lunch, e-mail and phones are blowing up" from peers in Wichita and Kinston arriving at work.

His day continues with late-evening meetings for Russell and others who coordinate with U.S. facilities.

"At this point in the project, a lot of us work two shifts," Russell said.

He's not complaining. Russell came to France to get the plant running.

"I'm here to work," he said.

'A little jewel'

During a recent tour, workers were installing the tooling used in the various assembly positions inside the brightly lit factory.

The plant employs 34 people, including five on assignment from the U.S. Employment will increase to about 75 when the A350 reaches full production rates.

"It's not a big production; it's meant to be contained," Dan Wheeler, vice president and general manager for Spirit's North Carolina business unit, said during a tour of the facility.

"It's meant to do the job, but it's also a little jewel. We're proud of what we've got going on here."

In the future, there is room for the plant to double in size.

"We'd love to have it be a future of steady growth," Wheeler said.

St. Nazaire is a harbor town of about 67,000 with a long history of fishing and shipbuilding. It lies on the mouth of the Loire River near the Atlantic in western France and is an important seaport.

It became a major German submarine base during World War II and was nearly destroyed by Allied bombing. The town was rebuilt in the late 1940s.

Today, the shipyard and Airbus are major employers. Spirit selected the site in large part because of its proximity to the ocean and to Airbus, Wheeler said.

"It really came down to risk and economics," Wheeler said.

It's less expensive to ship separate panels over the ocean than to ship a larger, heavier, completed fuselage section, Wheeler said.

Spirit also was attracted by the region's expertise in composites. Airbus' facility in nearby Nantes has a composite center of excellence.

Employees say they were attracted to Spirit because of the opportunities to work with composites, Russell said.

"Workers see composites as the future," he said.

The facility, officially called Spirit France, was set up as a French legal entity.

"It works better that way," Wheeler said.

It's easier, for example, to get parts through customs and to work with the tax structure.

"The advantages of being a French company is just to fit in," Wheeler said. "All the rules seem to fit you better."

French customs take time to understand and get used to, Russell said. That's been helped by French employees on the management team.

At the site's ground-breaking, Wheeler delivered his 11-minute keynote address in French. The effort went over well with employees and others in attendance, he said.

A mix of cultures

Language is just one difference to overcome in operating a plant in France.

French workers are off for many religious holidays, including four in May alone. In addition, the industry standard is to take August off.

"It's not that the work ethic isn't here," Wheeler said. "There's a big human consideration here. Lots of time with the family."

One French custom that workers have had to work around is long lunches.

"An hourlong lunch is pushing them to the uncomfortable stage," Russell said of local restaurants. "You have the meal, you have dessert and then you have coffee."

That's why the local McDonald's and nearby pizza and calzone restaurant, jokingly called the "Spirit Cafeteria," are popular. They serve lunch much faster.

The Spirit facility provides opportunities for Spirit's U.S. and French employees.

It gives Wichita and Kinston workers who come to help support the plant an opportunity for development. And French employees are finding room for growth.

Spirit site support manager Severine Bouclet was the site's first new hire. Bouclet is fluent in English and has worked as an interpreter.

Bouclet describes the facility as a mix of French and American cultures.

"In France, when we try to recruit someone, we always look for perfection," she said. "We call it the sheep with five legs."

Local employers look for the perfect resume, the perfect education and the perfect experience, she said.

U.S. employers are more open-minded and offer more opportunities, she said.

"You bet on people more than something on a piece of paper," she said.

Americans are also more laid-back than the French.

"You don't take yourselves as seriously as we do," she said.

This story was originally published July 31, 2011 at 12:00 AM with the headline "New plant in France extends Spirit's global reach."