Nashville Airport Aids Industrial Recruitment
Published May 23, 2008
Vought Aircraft Industries, which has been in Nashville for 70 years, produces wings and aircraft parts for Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Cessna and Gulfstream.
The location of Nashville International Airport is crucial to a subset of industries blossoming here.
There is the 70-year-old Vought Aircraft Industries facility located next to the airport. And while it has adapted after being sold and conglomerated
over the decades, it continues to thrive as it produces wings and aircraft parts for Airbus, Lockheed Martin, Cessna and Gulfstream.
Carlyle Carroll, vice president of recruitment for the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, says the company announced in 2007 that it was investing $25 million in equipment for Airbus, which could be worth $1 billion over the next five years.
Lynne Warne, who handles external communications for Vought, says the 2.1 million-square-foot local plant upped its workforce by about 20 percent – to 1,150 – in 2007. About 80 percent of the employees are involved in production.
And it’s far from standing still, according to general manager Dan Tharp.
“My vision for the site includes upgrading our technology, infrastructure and to provide our employees the training needed to support our increasing customer demand, new business opportunities and to achieve improved productivity and quality performance,” Tharp says.
While Vought is a “heritage” business – the Nashville site began as Stinson Aircraft Co., the third-largest producer of war materials during World War II, according to Warne – new firms are drawn by the available land with access to the airport, as well as the skilled workforce.
Both factored into the expansion by Embraer Aircraft Maintenance Systems.
The company has been located in Nashville for about 16 years, but in 2006, it expanded to a 71,000-square-foot hangar at the airport.
That put the company near its customers and also created about 140 jobs.
Carroll credits the Metro Nashville Airport Authority, the state of Tennessee and TVA for making this location attractive for the company, which services a variety of aircraft from its location right off the runways.
But another factor is the quality of the labor force at the old facility.
“What they told us was that the existing workforce that was in place here was one of the most productive in their entire system,” Caroll says.
“There are airports all over the country that can put together a deal like the one we put together, but the productivity of the Nashville-area employee is what won out.”
The quality of available talent was also responsible for the expansion into Nashville of GKN Aerospace.
The company hired about 60 engineers when opening its GKN Engineering Development Center in 2005, Carroll says. “They were very aware of the professional expertise in the aerospace engineering field in the Nashville area.”
Story by Tim Ghianni
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