More Manufacturing All-Stars

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Introduction WINNERS BY INDUSTRY Education | Financial services | Government | Healthcare | Manufacturing | Transportation | Hospitality | More WINNERS BY TECHNOLOGY Applications | Convergence | E-commerce | Management | Security | Servers | Storage | WAN | Wireless Download complete list of winners John Gallant on being an All-Star

GOODRICH AEROSTRUCTURES

• Project lead: John Ortiz, business adviser
• Technology focus: E-commerce - online parts catalog

This leading supplier of structural aircraft components, lives and dies with its illustrated parts catalog. Thousands of technicians at 650 customer locations worldwide use the catalogs as vital sources of product information. This project, which saved $1.5 million in production costs in the first year, brought the production and distribution of those catalogs in-house. Previously, the Chula Vista, Calif., company sent raw data to an outside catalog producer, which took about six months to compile the information into catalogs. Now it offers customers Web access to state-of-the-art illustrated parts catalogs that pull information in real time from Goodrich's internal content repositories. Customers get up-to-date information they can use to order replacement parts and components with speed and accuracy. Using Enigma's 3C Platform, the company built dynamic catalogs supporting 50 aircraft programs. Goodrich achieved ROI on this multiyear, $640,000 project in just six months while improving efficiency and providing better customer service.

LOCKHEED MARTIN

• Project lead: Jasyn Voshell, wireless LAN security director
• Technology focus: Wireless - WLAN security

Given the classified military information riding over its network, information security is a top priority for this Bethesda, Md., defense contractor. The company's aeronautics business, for example, occurs in 150 buildings spread over three states. Hundreds of contractors and 30,000 employees, many of them toting wireless-enabled laptops, roam the facilities. Security officers knew they had to find a way to eliminate unauthorized wireless networks from the company's air domain and to keep legitimate access points compliant with security policies. The security team also wanted real-time alerts on security breaches and policy violations and centralized access-point management. It found the answer in the AirDefense Enterprise intrusion-detection system , which now monitors the campus airwaves - with marked results. Within the first six months of deployment, Lockheed discovered nearly two dozen rogue access points, a battery of contractors either setting up or probing to find WLANs and a host of ad-hoc networks being created to swap classified data. In addition, the AirDefense system helped identify and stop two off-campus attacks. Besides improved security, business benefits include reduced costs and improved productivity and efficiency. For example, Lockheed attributes a two-month decrease in the time it takes to build a fighter jet to its use of wireless electronic work instruction carts for storing blueprints.