“Airworthy, Inc. Fabrication division cuts, sews, and welds interior textile and non-textile products for the transportation industry. We specialize in aerospace carpets and non-textile flooring products for commercial aviation. Our Hudson, WI production facility utilizes an automated Eastman conveyor cutting machine to enable us to meet and/or exceed our strict quality and capacity goals.

Our Fabrication division is certified to AS9100D, allowing us to showcase our commitment to customer satisfaction, on-time delivery, and product quality. Our Eastman machine is a key piece of equipment in our production process and ability to meet goals.

In 2019, the Hudson Fabrication division cut 213,938 yards of aircraft flooring product with our Eastman at a year end average of 99.66% product quality. Through continuous improvement initiatives, Airworthy, Inc. Hudson Fabrication has been able to reach 100% product quality and no reported customer rejections for product produced the first half of 2020 (January 2020-July 2020).

We can accurately perform capacity planning with the aid of the automated machine utilization metric calculated by the Eastman. Knowing the output of our machine allows us to plan our labor and time-off schedules of downline processes to meet our customers’ demands and delivery schedules. Our Eastman and marker software also aids in material planning and allows us to calculate material utilization efficiency to ensure lean production and accurate inventory. Reducing material waste in the nesting and cutting operations is not only beneficial to the company and our customers, but also the environment. In fact, all our material scrap is recycled through a recovery program to further reduce our impact on the environment.

The consistency of cuts and punches, as well as the ability to set standardized machine settings for part numbers means that we can determine order turn-around-times with ease and deliver a consistent quality product. We can produce orders with short TAT when aircraft are on the ground for unscheduled maintenance or expedite orders to help ensure minimal down-time and lost revenue for our customers. Depending on customer location we can deliver same day or next day with an accurate ETA delivery window.

Our machine is outfitted with the Eastman EasiMark air brush marking system, which allows us to automate part marking with indelible ink. The system enables us to customize markings based on customer requirements such as part number, revision, production date, or install markings. Since the markings are programmed into the Eastman files, we can produce consistent markings production run after production run.

Our Eastman machine has allowed us to set industry tolerance and quality standards for fit when it comes to aircraft flooring. We are proud to work with nearly every major commercial carrier and their regional partners as well as original equipment manufacturers to fabricate flooring to customer requirements and design specifications.

Eastman has also assisted us to increase efficiency for other Airworthy, Inc. divisions. For example, we have automated the cutting process of liner sheets (made of woven E and/or S-glass cloth with a modified phenolic resin system and a 1 ml white Tedlar ® overlay resin sheet) for our Maintenance Repair Overhaul (MRO) division. By cutting multi-plys of the liner sheets and using marker nesting efficiency placement, we have increased the cutting process efficiency time by nearly 94% and decreased material usage.

Like many other industries, aviation has been severely impacted by Covid-19. We have worked with our customers to design cargo bags to allow passenger aircraft to be converted to cargo operations without cabin reconfiguration. This allows our customers to contribute to the much-needed movement of medical supplies and other necessities due to the global supply chain impacts of Covid-19.

Despite the industry impacts experienced in 2020, Airworthy, Inc. Fabrication is looking to the future. We are planning to increase capacity and expand our product lines with the addition of a second machine for our Hudson, WI facility. The choice to purchase and customize a new machine from Eastman was easy considering the reliability and capabilities of our current machine.”

-Rebecca Johnson, Quality Manager