Lockheed Martin has completed construction of an advanced manufacturing facility at its Palmdale, California, campus and headquarters to the Skunk Works.

The 215,000 square foot intelligent, flexible factory has digital foundations to incorporate smart manufacturing components, embrace the Internet of Things and deliver cutting edge solutions rapidly and affordably to support the United States and its allies. This is one of four transformational manufacturing facilities Lockheed Martin is opening in the U.S. this year.

This new building incorporates all three of Lockheed Martin's advanced production priorities: an intelligent factory framework; a technology enabled advanced manufacturing environment; and a flexible factory construct to support customer priorities with speed and agility while bolstering manufacturing capability in the United States.

"For more than 100 years, Lockheed Martin has been proud to call California home," says Jeff Babione, vice president and general manager, Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. "Our partnership with the state has helped us remain competitive and has positioned us for long-term growth. The technology in our new Palmdale facility lets us go beyond manufacturing optimisation to the next digital revolution, driving innovation and preserving California's leadership in the aerospace industry."

Merging the power of human and machine, manufacturing artisans will work with digital tools to execute operations with maximum efficiency. The incorporation of robotics, artificial intelligence and augmented reality reduces the need for hard tooling, elevating the human experience to drive rapid innovation, a hallmark of the Skunk Works.

In addition to manufacturing, the facility includes office and break spaces to accommodate more than 450 employees. The company has created over 1,500 new jobs for California since 2018.

This project is the cornerstone of over $400 million in capital investments being made across Lockheed Martin's Palmdale campus to address growth in support of its customers' missions.

Meanwhile, Spirit AeroSystems has unveiled Polaris, a digital engineering and advanced assembly demonstrator used to validate improvements in product development from initial design to final assembly.

"Spirit AeroSystems is proud we were selected by Lockheed Martin to demonstrate the integration of a Tier 1 supplier into their Integrated Digital Environment (IDE), and then utilise that environment to validate advanced production processes on a demonstration platform," says Duane Hawkins, senior vice president; president, Defense and Space Division. "The IDE and its advanced production processes, including Full Size-Hole Determinant Assembly (FSDA), will form the foundation of how future defense programs are executed, and revolutionise the speed at which new products can be brought to market."

The Spirit Defense and Space Division integrated commercial best practices around digital design and manufacturing seamlessly into the Lockheed Martin IDE, enabling the collaborative development of production-ready solutions that build on the strengths of both the Spirit AeroSystems and Lockheed Martin teams.

"This reduced project execution cost and time by enabling parallel engineering development and operations planning, facilitating the team's ability to clearly communicate and ensure consistency of requirements, and to identify integration challenges before parts and tools were ever released for fabrication," Hawkins adds.

This integration allows design and production optimisation to occur simultaneously instead of as sequential discreet events, enabling production programs to progress down the learning curve prior to first-unit build. As a result of the Lockheed Martin and Spirit AeroSystems collaboration, advanced production processes were designed, planned, simulated, executed, and validated, leading to a 70% reduction in required assembly hours and a 95% increase in initial quality.

Lockheed Martin Skunk Works is responsible for many aerospace firsts, including the United States' first jet fighter (P-80), the world's first stealth fighter (F-117) and the world's first 5th generation fighter (F-22). With a proven way of working based on 14 simple rules, the Skunk Works is known for rapidly solving urgent national needs. With eight Collier trophies and a National Medal of Technology and Innovation awarded from the office of the President of the United States, the Skunk Works continues to define what is next in aerospace.