Boeing and Avic Aircraft are building a new manufacturing center at the Chinese company’s Xi’an base, where Avic will be taught more efficient production processes by Boeing to benefit both companies.

The first project for the facility, which will open next year, will be a new contract under which Avic Aircraft subsidiary Chengfei Commercial Aircraft will build Boeing 737 rudders, becoming a dual source alongside EADS CASA.

The Avic-Boeing Manufacturing Innovation Center “will enhance Boeing’s production system by increasing AVIC’s efficiency and capacity to supply high-quality parts for Boeing airplanes,” Boeing and Avic say in a joint statement. It “will also support Avic’s goals of improving its manufacturing and technological capabilities and the competitiveness of its affiliated factories to achieve global tier-1 supplier status.”

Avic will therefore learn processes that it can apply to other programs, including its own and those of aspiring Boeing competitor Comac. But the diffusion of manufacturing know-how is to some extent unavoidable in an industry in which suppliers serve several customers.

Chengfei Commercial is a specialist in civil parts manufacturing that has been split from the fighter plant at Chengdu and put under the management wing of Avic Aircraft, the unit of national aeronautics conglomerate Avic that focuses on large airplanes and their parts. Avic Aircraft also has an equivalent civil manufacturing unit at Shenyang that was formerly part of that city’s fighter plant.

“As a company in a global market poised for tremendous growth, we need to increase both the capacity and capabilities of our supply chain,” says Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Jim Albaugh. A spokesman for Boeing says the facility will consist of a classroom at Xi’an and factory floor training for Avic employees. Avic’s various units make parts for Boeing 737s, 747s and 787s.