Download PDF
Propelling Corporate Performance Gains at Lockheed Martin
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
- Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration
- Platform as a Service (PaaS) - Data Management Platforms
Applicable Industries
- Aerospace
- National Security & Defense
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
Use Cases
- Manufacturing System Automation
- Predictive Maintenance
- Real-Time Location System (RTLS)
Services
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
- Data Science Services
- System Integration
The Challenge
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Company, a leading developer and manufacturer of advanced missile, rocket, and space systems, faced a challenge of providing users of a variety of diverse information systems with a standard, self-service way to obtain financial and operational data. The company had various types of software applications, and many different reporting systems had evolved over time. The company attempted to achieve consistent reporting standards throughout the enterprise with a third-party client/server reporting application, but with limited success. The user interface was not satisfactory, the output from the application was not up to the mark, and the licensing costs associated with moving it to the Web were prohibitive.
About The Customer
Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control Company is a leading developer and manufacturer of advanced missile, rocket, and space systems. The company's customer list includes the United States Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, and its reputation for excellence is well established. In an era of precision warfare and computerized military defense systems, Lockheed Martin depends on powerful and precise information delivery tools to achieve its objectives. MFC’s two largest facilities are in Dallas, Texas, and Orlando, Florida, each with some 3,000 employees. Although the two sites have different IT environments, each uses WebFOCUS to deliver information in a standard format.
The Solution
Lockheed Martin adopted WebFOCUS, a business intelligence (BI) platform from Information Builders, to create a Web-based, user-friendly reporting environment that delivers information from legacy sources and packaged ERP applications in a common format. The company worked with Information Builders’ technical experts to get the new software up and running. In addition to installing WebFOCUS, Information Builders’ Consulting helped Lockheed Martin construct a data connectivity architecture using technology from iWay Software. Together, they laid the foundation for a new self-service reporting environment called the Business Intelligence Enterprise Reporting (BIER) system. WebFOCUS was used to create several key financial reports, most of which accept parameterized input and are accessible through a dashboard interface. Each report can be customized to a degree. Some are very detailed, and some are designed as drill-down reports.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Airbus Soars with Wearable Technology
Building an Airbus aircraft involves complex manufacturing processes consisting of thousands of moving parts. Speed and accuracy are critical to business and competitive advantage. Improvements in both would have high impact on Airbus’ bottom line. Airbus wanted to help operators reduce the complexity of assembling cabin seats and decrease the time required to complete this task.
Case Study
Aircraft Predictive Maintenance and Workflow Optimization
First, aircraft manufacturer have trouble monitoring the health of aircraft systems with health prognostics and deliver predictive maintenance insights. Second, aircraft manufacturer wants a solution that can provide an in-context advisory and align job assignments to match technician experience and expertise.
Case Study
Aerospace & Defense Case Study Airbus
For the development of its new wide-body aircraft, Airbus needed to ensure quality and consistency across all internal and external stakeholders. Airbus had many challenges including a very aggressive development schedule and the need to ramp up production quickly to satisfy their delivery commitments. The lack of communication extended design time and introduced errors that drove up costs.
Case Study
Developing Smart Tools for the Airbus Factory
Manufacturing and assembly of aircraft, which involves tens of thousands of steps that must be followed by the operators, and a single mistake in the process could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to fix, makes the room for error very small.
Case Study
Accelerate Production for Spirit AeroSystems
The manufacture and assembly of massive fuselage assemblies and other large structures generates a river of data. In fact, the bill of materials for a single fuselage alone can be millions of rows of data. In-house production processes and testing, as well as other manufacturers and customers created data flows that overwhelmed previous processes and information systems. Spirit’s customer base had grown substantially since their 2005 divestiture from Boeing, resulting in a $41 billion backlog of orders to fill. To address this backlog, meet increased customer demands and minimize additional capital investment, the company needed a way to improve throughput in the existing operational footprint. Spirit had a requirement from customers to increase fuselage production by 30%. To accomplish this goal, Spirit needed real-time information on its value chain and workflow. However, the two terabytes of data being pulled from their SAP ECC was unmanageable and overloaded their business warehouse. It had become time-consuming and difficult to pull aggregate data, disaggregate it for the needed information and then reassemble to create a report. During the 6-8 hours it took to build a report, another work shift (they run three per day) would have already taken place, thus the report content was out-of-date before it was ever delivered. As a result, supervisors often had to rely on manual efforts to provide charts, reports and analysis.
