BROUGHTON, UK—Like a cartoon space alien with a dome-like skull, an Airbus Beluga transport plane arriving from Madrid drops from the sky above this village 200 miles northwest of London and taxis to a stop with its front end tucked inside a large building off the runway. Its bulbous forehead pops open to disgorge massive wing panels—98 feet long and 20 feet wide—that will soon be assembled by sophisticated robots and about 800 people into the largest carbon-fiber composite wings now built for commercial aviation.
OSHAWA, ON—Canadian auto workers union Unifor has a tentative contract agreement with General Motors Co. that not only breathes new life into the at-risk Oshawa Assembly Plant east of Toronto, but signifies a testament to the importance of the automotive industry across Canada.
PETROLIA, CA—Victor Scheinman, the Stanford engineering professor whose electrically powered, computer-controlled robot would become the Programmable Universal Machine for Assembly (PUMA) robot, has died at age 73.
TORONTO—Unifor has selected General Motors as the company with which it will set a pattern for negotiating new labor contracts with the Detroit Three automakers. The Canadian union’s current contracts with the companies expire Sept. 19.
OAK RIDGE, TN—Engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created the world’s largest solid 3D-printed structure. Measuring 17.5 feet long, 5.5 feet wide and 1.5 feet tall, the structure is a trim-and-drill fixture for manufacturing a component of the Boeing 777X passenger jet.
DEARBORN, MI—Ford plans to eventually shift all North American small-car production from the U.S. to Mexico, CEO Mark Fields told investors last week, even though the company’s production investments in Mexico have become a lightning rod for controversy in the presidential election.
SEATTLE—Joe Sutter, the Boeing Co. engineer who ushered in the modern era of long-range travel by spearheading the 747 jumbo jet in the 1960s, died this week. He was 95.
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