MHI Delivers Aft Fuselage Panels for the First 777X, Boeing's Next-Generation Wide-Body Airliner

- Integrated Production System Utilizes the Cutting-Edge Equipment -

- Delivery ceremony held at the Hiroshima Machinery Works Eba Plant on February 7
- Productivity enhanced with proprietary automated facilities, furthering development of the commercial aircraft business

TOKYO, Feb 7, 2018 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) has delivered the aft fuselage panels for the first Boeing 777X, Boeing's next-generation wide-body passenger aircraft. The panels were shipped from MHI's Hiroshima Machinery Works Eba Plant. Based on the development and supply contract concluded in July 2015, MHI continues to be responsible for the similar structural components as for the current 777 series, manufacturing the panels of aft and tail fuselages, and passenger doors.

A ceremony to commemorate the first delivery of the panels was held at the Eba Plant the same day. Many project officials attended the event, including Boeing representatives such as Eric Lindblad, Vice President & General Manager, 777X Program, Jason Clark, 777/777X Vice President, Operations, and others.

The Eba Plant, which formerly had been a steelworks factory, was renovated for aerostructures production with proprietary automated production lines developed by MHI, thereby improving quality, expanding processing capacity and enhancing efficiency. For the 777X, MHI introduced new specially-developed equipment for high-quality component manufacturing, and also aggregated various production processes that previously had been spread across several locations, utilizing integrated processing to shorten lead-times and eliminating other bottlenecks in the previous workflow.

Delivery of the first 777X airplane to airlines is scheduled for 2020.

MHI has developed and introduced leading-edge equipment for the international co-production of the 777X, and will continue to pursue further growth in the commercial aircraft business.

About Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI), headquartered in Tokyo, is one of the world's leading industrial firms with 80,000 group employees and annual consolidated revenues of around 38 billion U.S. dollars. For more than 130 years, the company has channeled big thinking into innovative and integrated solutions that move the world forward. MHI owns a unique business portfolio covering land, sea, sky and even space. MHI delivers innovative and integrated solutions across a wide range of industries from commercial aviation and transportation to power plants and gas turbines, and from machinery and infrastructure to integrated defense and space systems.
For more information, please visit the MHI Group website: http://www.mhi-global.com.
For Technology, Trends and Tangents, visit MHI's new online media SPECTRA: http://spectra.mhi.com.

Contact:
Joseph Hood, PR Manager Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. Email: mhi-pr@mhi.co.jp Tel: +81-(0)3-6716-2168 Fax: +81-(0)3-6716-5860

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