18 Jan 05. Training for the UK’s ASTOR System has now commenced at RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire. Managed by the programme’s prime contractor, Raytheon Systems Limited (RSL), the first of two Joint Test Team courses are now underway. This marks the beginning of the ASTOR through life training programme that will support the work up to Full Operational Capability and beyond.
21 Jan 05. About 8,000 new manufacturing jobs have been created in the UK through the pan-European Airbus A380 project, boosting the hard-pressed industrial sector, according to a study. Philip Lawrence, head of the aerospace research centre at the University of the West of England in Bristol, estimates the jobs have been split about equally between the UK operations of Toulouse-based Airbus and several hundred UK suppliers.
25 Jan 05. Oxley, Inc., Branford, CT, manufacturer of leading edge aircraft LED lighting systems, has been awarded the prestigious AS9100 Quality Systems designation for the aerospace industry, it was announced this week by Martin Sloan, CEO. This means that Oxley meets all requirements in the areas of configuration management; reliability; maintainability and safety; design verification and testing processes; approval and review of subcontractor performance; verification of purchased products; product identification throughout the lighting’s life cycle, product documentation; control production process changes; control of production equipment, tools and numerical control machine programs; control of work performed; special processes; inspection and testing procedure; and corrective action. This certificate joins Oxley’s ISO9001: 2000 certificate, both of which are highly integrated. To achieve this status Oxley has demonstrated their constantly improving state of the art procedures throughout the company. Oxley is also involved in securing AS9100 approval in the United Kingdom.
24 Jan 05. Driveline and chassis technology specialist ZF has relocated its US headquarters to its North American Technical Centre in The facility will now be known as the ZF Group North American Operations Headquarters and Technical Centre. Since 1997, the headquarters had been located in Florence, Kentucky, just south of Cincinnati, Ohio. ZF recently expanded the Northville facility to 248,000 square-feet in an effort to house all ZF divisions within Detroit at a single location. The company has been in the Detroit area since 1987, and opened the technical centre during 2001. (Source: just-auto.com)
20 Jan 05. Northrop Grumman Corporation has begun acceptance testing the first of four new workstations that will allow it to reduce the time and cost to develop operational flight software for the Department of Defense’s J-UCAS program. The testing, which began in mid December, marks the beginning of operations for a systems integration laboratory the company opened in October at its San Diego facility to support work on its X-47B J-UCAS program. The company expects to install the remaining three workstations in the facility by March 2005. These new workstations include an X-47B vehicle management computer (VMC), a six-degree of freedom simulation, and all of the input/output and test equipment needed to produce flight-ready software. Smiths Aerospace of Grand Rapids, Mich. produced the VMCs.
24 Jan 05. Current and former African American employees of Boeing Co. have been granted class-action status in their lawsuit accusing the defense giant of discrimination and harassing black workers. The ruling, handed down by U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman, means about 15,000 African American salaried workers employed by the Chicago-based company from June 6, 1994, to the present can unite under one complaint to seek damages. The suit, filed in 1998, doesn’t include executives and technicians represented by the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace.
27 Jan 05. A group of Senate Democrats opposing the nomination of Condoleezza