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Spirit Aerosystems soars under a Taiwanese boss

"What I see is amazing. All the pieces in an airplane cannot fly. But when you put them together, it flies."

Peter Wu, vice president and chief scientist for Spirit Aerosystems

As a boy in Taiwan, Peter Wu (吳洵) loved to ride his bicycle to the airport and watch airplanes land and take off.

"What I see is amazing," he recalls. "All the pieces in an airplane cannot fly. But when you put them together, it flies."

Today, at 52, Wu has a key role in the process of putting the pieces together. He is vice president and chief scientist for Spirit Aerosystems, the firm formed last year after Toronto-based Onex Corp bought Boeing's commercial aircraft operations in Wichita and Oklahoma.

Company officials say Wu's job is to use new technologies to improve the quality, speed and safety of production. He recently received a patent for an improvement to a process for reducing the weight of aluminum used for the fuselages of Boeing 737 aircraft.

It involves peeling protective coating off large aluminum panels and dipping them into chemical tanks where a caustic solution etches part of the metal away, reducing its weight.

"Technology is critical to the success of the company," Wu said.

Wu, who came to the US at 25 to further his education, was honored last month by the Chinese Institute of Engineers. It presented him with its Asian American Engineer of the Year award for his work with environmentally safer processes and corrosion prevention on aircraft.

Wu went to work as a technical fellow for Boeing's commercial airplane division in Wichita in 1989. He became a Spirit vice president after the sale of the division last June.

When Wu arrived at Boeing, what is now the manufacturing process facility was a parking lot. Under his leadership, the company put up a 900,000m2 building where work on panels and other chemical processing, painting and priming are performed. Wu also developed many processes used in the building.

Bill Washburn, who works for him, said Wu is technically brilliant in both chemical engineering and composites, especially resins. He said Wu also brings vision and insight into what Spirit must develop or acquire "to support new product innovations" in the next two to 20 years.

Currently, Washburn said, Spirit is trying to understand what Boeing and Airbus, the two major commercial aircraft manufacturers, "are trying to do for their next generation single-aisle airplanes."

Spirit is working to figure out what materials the manufacturers might use and how Spirit might develop or acquire the technologies needed to win the contracts to supply those needs. And with a shortage of titanium and composite fiber resins, Spirit is trying to develop -- either alone or with an industrial or university partner -- alternative materials, Washburn said.

Although he has lived more than half his life in the US, Wu maintains close contact with his father and mother, calling them twice a day. His parents, Wu said, taught him to work hard, keep a positive attitude, and not to focus on himself but to "think about the big `we.'"

One person, no matter how smart he is, cannot make an airplane, Wu said. It takes many people working together, he said.
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