Boeing Partners with Haimer at OMIC

The Oregon Manufacturing Innovation Center Research and Development (OMIC R&D; Scappoose, OR) continues to grow a strong membership base with the addition this month of Haimer GmbH (Hollenbach, Germany) a world-market leading German tooling company in the field of tool holding, shrinking, balancing and presetting. With a total of 17 manufacturing industry partners and three Oregon public universities, OMIC R&D continues to build a world-class operation to develop advanced metals manufacturing technologies through their collaborative research and development activities.

The Boeing Company (Chicago, IL) — with their center of excellence and main production plant for heavy metal machining in Portland, OR — is intensifying their strategic partnership with Haimer by sponsoring a joint membership at OMIC R&D. This partnership reaches back more than ten years, when Haimer’s Safe-Lock™ pull out protection system became a true game changer at Boeing. With one of the largest titanium machining shops in the world, Boeing Portland has set the standard for cutting tools and tool holder applications for difficult to machine materials. This partnership will be strategically strengthened by Haimer investment and support as a new member at OMIC R&D.

The Safe-Lock system has become the Boeing Portland standard for roughing in their milling operations. Haimer implemented an open licensing policy where additional American and other cutting tool makers offer this technology as a standard system that is widely used in the Boeing machining operations. In fact, Boeing has also received an IP, patent and trade mark license from Haimer to be able to quickly respond to their machining needs for this innovative technology. Prior to using Safe-Lock in their production, Boeing was constantly facing the challenge of preventing the cutting tool from pull-out that potentially created very expensive scrap. Over the last ten years since using this system, the plant hasn’t had a single tool pullout incident for their high value components – thus avoiding any sort of expensive scrap and machining failure that was a common problem before.

“We are very carefully vetting and inviting members to partner up and contribute to OMIC R&D,” said William Gerry, the global technology program manager for Boeing Research and Technology. “We are delighted about the new membership of Haimer, who we know and rely on heavily and exclusively for this service. They can support OMIC R&D and their members with state-of-the-art technology and Industry 4.0 connectivity systems.”

OMIC R&D is the 15th research center established with Boeing leadership worldwide, and the first one Boeing has sponsored in the United States. Their mission is to bring together manufacturing companies and higher education in an innovation environment where “outside-in” applied research with faculty and university students solves real problems for advanced manufacturers while training the next generation of engineers and technologists. Member companies share machinery, equipment such as tools, and expertise to create a highly dynamic and innovative R&D function for members.

“We are proud and happy to be closely associated with Boeing as a leading aircraft manufacturer and one of our biggest global customers,” explained Andreas Haimer, the president of the Haimer Group, during the official handshake at becoming an OMIC R&D member. “The investment and membership at OMIC R&D is a clear commitment to the community, our customers and the entire manufacturing industry in Oregon, the Pacific Northwest and American manufacturing. OMIC R&D is an ideal platform to share these kinds of best practices, making American and Oregon manufacturers more competitive. Apart from Boeing Portland, we also heavily support leading Boeing facilities in the U.S. with our system technologies in Auburn, Seattle, Everett, Helena, St. Louis, and Fredrickson.”

Haimier joins 18 other OMIC R&D industry and university members in the Scappoose facility. “Outside-in advance manufacturing research activities from Oregon Institute of Technology, Portland State University, and Oregon State University are solving manufacturing problem sets at OMIC R&D to support our members,” noted Craig Campbell, the executive director of OMIC R&D. “Due to the strong investments from state and local government, we have become a draw for global manufacturing companies and are realizing our promise as an economic driver for the state and region.” The OMIC R&D model focuses research on helping indigenous industries increase competitiveness while creating a real partnership with and integration into the local economy.

As research activities expand with high cost, high-value machinery added on to the production floor, OMIC R&D will increase state and regional commercial productivity in manufacturing and stimulate economic growth and development. Coordinated with their applied research projects will be hands-on “earn and learn” apprenticeship programs at the PCC OMIC Training Center led by Portland Community College and located in a nearby facility that PCC is building. While the Training Center construction is underway, PCC has a temporary delivery site at Scappoose High School.

“We have been delighted to support various production facilities in the Northwest over the past 15 years with state-of-the-art shrinking and balancing machines that have helped reduce operating costs and increase productivity,” said Brendt Holden, the president of Haimer USA, LLC (Villa Park, IL), in summarizing this partnership. “With presetting, tool holding and milling tools we have become a system partner around the machine tools. Lately we have been involved with multiple presetting projects in the Northwest that can reduce setup time and significantly increase the efficiency of the operation while implementing Industry 4.0 technology by tool management capabilities. We are happy to share our equipment and knowledge in the OMIC in an effort to help the setups of the R&D projects be as efficient as possible.”

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