The new Research & Technology Center-South Carolina will open later this year and focus on advanced manufacturing technology and composite fuselage manufacturing. Boeing fabricates parts for and assembles the composites-intensive 787 Dreamliner at its main North Charleston campus beside Charleston International Airport, less than 10 miles from the new research facility.
"This research center brings our technology organization and Boeing South Carolina closer together to transition technology from research and development to our commercial airplane and defense products faster and more efficiently," Lane Ballard, site leader of the research center and vice president of materials and manufacturing technology for Boeing, told the newspaper.
The report notes that the new jobs are part of the 2,000 new positions the company said it would create by 2020 after it secured a $120 million incentive deal for infrastructure development from the state in April 2013, in exchange for another $1 billion investment in South Carolina. Boeing currently employs about 7,500 people at its local facilities near the airport and in Palmetto Commerce Park.
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