Aviation Week & Space Technology
08/20/2007, page 95
Printed headline: Something New
Nestled between two national nonprofits in the top tech rankings is Hamilton Sundstrand, a unit of United Technologies Corp.
President David Hess says the technology challenges of his company are what attract and keep employees. “The lifecycles for our products tend to be a bit longer, perhaps, than a cell phone or automobile,” he says. “But the innovation required and their application is absolutely fascinating.”
Hamilton Sundstrand ranks second among A&D companies for technological challenge, such as development on new propellers with more horsepower and size than ever before.Credit: HAMILTON SUNDSTRAND |
Hamilton Sundstrand’s technological innovations run the gamut, from the gloves worn by astronauts in space to aircraft propellers, the product that launched the company a century ago. Hess points to the propeller developed for use on the A400M, Airbus Military’s new product: “It’s an eight-blade composite, 17.5 ft. in diameter,” he says. “The physics required to make that size and horsepower work is remarkable.”
The company is also developing and delivering much of the electrical technology for Boeing’s 787. Those systems are four times more powerful and six times the level of power density of any aircraft flying today, according to Hess. “It takes a lot of innovation to be able to do these types of things. Our engineers love these kinds of challenges.”
Hess admits that his organizational structure has had to undergo its own innovation. Formerly product-focused, the organization now has a program focus to support its system-integration role. The change was required due to the degree of complexity of 787 work—Hamilton Sundstrand provides 1,300 major components per airplane, 1.5 megawatts of power and more than 1.2 million lines of code to control. “This dwarfs anything we’ve done before,” says Hess. At the same time, Hamilton Sundstrand also captured a major position on the Orion, NASA’s next-generation space exploration vehicle.
As companies compete for the talent required to develop and deliver these complex systems, Hess defines what makes Hamilton Sundstrand stand out in the field: “We have that breadth of work, from the 787 and A380 to the A400 and F-35 to the Orion,” he says. “We have the ability to not only develop these systems,” but integrate them—from generating power to managing and controlling consumption of that power.
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