"The focus of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics is military aircraft,"
says unit president Dain Hancock-and the Fort Worth, Texas-based
company's focus is sharper than ever now that the activities of
three separate aircraft development and manufacturing organizations
have been rolled into one.
Management realized in 1999 that "the business base was just
not going to support three separate companies within Lockheed Martin,"
so January 2000 saw the start of an aggressive consolidation drive.
The goal? "To position ourselves for the long term," Hancock
says. Business units formerly headquartered in Palmdale, California,
and Marietta, Georgia, are now managed out of Fort Worth, Texas,
under what the LMAero president calls "a single business model."
"Some of the engineering design processes are still somewhat
unique to the various sites," Hancock concedes, and certain
human resources functions remain to be fully integrated. So do some
long-term changes in what Hancock calls "corporate culture"-LMAero's
very headquarters, after all (and Hancock himself), was part of
General Dynamics until March 1993, and he reckons another three
to five years for all the past nuances to fade. But LMAero, which
has annual sales of about $5 billion, is already realizing its goal
of saving some $200 million per year via the reorganization. Employment
was pared from 25,100 between the three units in December 1999 to
22,170 at the consolidated company by December 2000, a figure said
to be holding steady.
More important, says Hancock, is that the innovation culture from
the former "Skunk Works" in Palmdale has now been spread
throughout the organization. It is, he says, "the front end
of our entire business."
The forward-thinking attitude from the days of such secret programs
as the F-117 Stealth fighter is a critical asset as Lockheed girds
for future F-22 Raptor sales (assembly of the first operational
aircraft began in March), and for the all-important Joint Strike
Fighter, where Hancock's company is in a dogfight with Boeing.
"If we're going to be in the military aircraft business in
the future, and there is a Joint Strike Fighter, we've got to have
a significant portion of it," Hancock says. "It is the
future of the aeronautics part of Lockheed Martin," he told
Show News.
And while the JSF program itself remains in doubt pending high-level
decisions by the Pentagon, "Certainly we've got a technical
solution that's going to provide exactly the right answer for the
customer," Hancock says. Lockheed expects to complete STOVL
tests on its X-35B JSF variant at Palmdale this month.
LMAero is not in the maintenance business, as post-sale support
functions at Lockheed are in the hands of the Greenville, South
Carolina-based Lockheed Martin Aircraft & Logistics Centers.
And while its focus is military aircraft, the Fort Worth company
does continue work on several developmental programs with civilian
market potential, including large airships, supersonic business
jets, and fiber optics technology.
LMAero took orders worth some $13.5 billion in calendar 2000, "even
though we were in a period of transition," Hancock notes. The
total includes 234 F-16 Fighting Falcons, and new orders for the
C-130J bringing the "J" total to 111 aircraft. The year
2000 tally alone, Hancock says, "creates a scope of business
that runs right through 2006."
By Rich Piellisch
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