Old products, new manufacturing techniques.  Pratt & Whitney, inspired by auto plants, is embarking on a new way to build jet engines.  For decades its hand-built engines were wheeled around the factory floor as that various speicalists could work on them.  The company has now installed automated assembly lines with ceiling-mounted jigs at its plants in Connecticut and Florida.  The setup will help speed up the production of advanced geared turbofan engines that Pratt is selling to power a new generation of jets from Airbus, Bombardier, Embraer and Mitsubishi.

Workers will continue to assemble engines by hand.  now the engines will be moved around on jigs mounted on tracks on the plant’s ceiling.  The plants will be completely renovated by 2015.