CHESTERFIELD, Mo. -- Flying Colours, the North American maintenance, repair, completions and avionics business, has opened the doors of its new St. Louis County, Missouri, location.
Manufacturing at the St. Louis County location primarily supports the design, build and finishing of wood interiors for large business jet cabins.
The industrially designed floorplan was created with lean manufacturing operating principles at its core. This improves efficiency, and combined with the additional workshop space, is set to increase St. Louis productivity dramatically during the first year.
The workshop capabilities mirror the copany’s Peterborough, Ontario, headquarters, but also incorporate new equipment for the St. Louis location. To support working with composite materials a new “Edge Fill” machine fills the voids in composite panels after they are cut and shaped by the CNC machine.
The addition of two new paint booths ensures optimal surface appearance before final treatment in the new enclosed curing room. Flying Colours has also invested in a third booth dedicated to painting complex fasteners, and cabinet interiors.
The layout ensures that the manufacturing follows the natural workflow with projects beginning on the CNC, before moving on to the expansive machine room which incorporates a selection of detailing tools for woodwork/cabinetry. Paint, finishing, framing and assembly follow, before the final quality control inspection.
Flying Colours has also created spaces for upholstery, engineering, and avionics work, as well as production control offices, conference rooms, and bright contemporary client meeting areas.
“Naturally alongside the cabinetry comes other work related to interior completions including detailed upholstery of seats, bespoke galley creation, manufacturing of customized monuments, and design of upgraded connectivity solutions,” explains Sean Gillespie, executive V-P, Flying Colours Corp."
The St. Louis KSUS footprint is now close to 100,000 square feet and has required the addition of a further 70 team members, making a total of 180 Flying Colours employees based in the U.S.
“This is the first full infrastructure development to take place in St. Louis since we acquired the business in 2009. It was needed as demand for our cabinetry and completion skills was outstripping our capacity. This coincided with a rise in demand for OEM cabinetry work. The expansion reflects our overall strategic approach to business growth, and we’re not done yet as we anticipate a second phase of development in the USA later in the year,” said Gillespie.
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