AUSA Sustaining Member Profile: WestWind

Corporate Structure: Number of Employees: 200. President/ CEO: Dave Otterson. Headquarters: Huntsville, Ala. Telephone: (256) 319-0137. Web site: www.westwindcorp.com

The depth and strength of WestWind's engineering and technical capability provide the company its ability to respond to the urgent requirements of the warfighter in the field. Complementary to its capabilities, the company is driven by its mission to create best-value products and services to satisfy customer requirements and to continue to be a single-source solution for those customers.

WestWind's primary customer base consists of the U.S. Army, specifically Program Executive Officer (PEO) Aviation, the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force, as well as commercial aviation and some foreign military entities.

WestWind's core competency is the ability to integrate sophisticated black box systems, sometimes referred to as "B" kits, into existing platforms. The company designs, builds and buys the necessary components to integrate the "B" kit into the host platform. The final product, termed an "A" kit, is the culmination of the engineering design, the prototype manufacturing of the design and the subsequent installation and modification of the platform (usually a rotary-winged asset).

WestWind's ability to respond to aggressive schedules with a cost-effective, quality product has been a major discriminator. In order to better control the critical path, the company has made significant capital expenditures to become vertically integrated in those critical processes. Investments in equipment and machinery, including a laser cutting machine, paint booths, CNC equipment and coordinate measuring machine, have allowed the company to reflow the work and capture work space; as a result, the company has been able to continually decrease the time it takes to meet the ever-increasing demands for schedule compression by its customer base. Jobs that routinely took 16 hours to complete are now done in minutes.

WestWind has plans to aggressively implement Lean principles across all areas of the company. Eventually, tools such as Six Sigma will be integrated into those processes where it makes sense. This is a natural progression in the company's continuous improvement journey and includes kit consolidation and packaging, wiring harness fabrication, sheet metal, machined parts, chemical conversion coating, painting and other parts-handling requirements.

Quality, as defined by the company's 10,000 percent rule100 percent compliance, 100 percent of the time-is impressed upon each employee. WestWind is both 1509001:2000 and AS9100 registered. The company also maintains a FAA Part 145 repair station.

WestWind also operates a comprehensive kitting and warehousing operation. All "A" kit components are assembled, identified, packaged and shipped from the company's facilities. Great strides have been made to ensure the accuracy and quality of the kits, some of which contain more than 4,000 individual parts.

WestWind also offers a full complement of logistics services. The Technical Services Group provides technical manuals, maintenance work orders, RSNs, provisioning and training material to a broad customer base.

The hangar modification team operates out of a hanger at Redstone Arsenal and Huntsville International Airport in Alabama. Most recently, the company has been installing Desert Mod kits for the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) in preparation for their redeployment to Operation Enduring Freedom. This has been accomplished in the company's hangar facilities located on Redstone Arsenal. WestWind also provides field team support to the U.S. Army's PEO Aviation PMCargo, PM-AES, PM-Attack, PM-AME and PM-Utility. In the last year, the modification team has supported work in Alaska, Hawaii, Oregon, Fort Campbell, Ky., Fort Irwin, Calif., Fort Drum, N.Y., Fort Hood, Texas, Hunter Army Airfield, Ga., Fort Bragg, N.C., and Fort Eustis, Va., in response to force urgency requirements. In addition, the company has supported foreign military sales operations in Egypt, Greece, Japan and Germany.

The company operates, among other contractual vehicles, through an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity contract, administered by the Logistic Support Facility Management Activity, which provides government and commercial program managers with a quick reaction, high quality, low cost, sole source avenue with which to reach WestWind. The company has several other contractual vehicles through which it operates in addition to subcontractor relationships in the commercial and foreign markets.

WestWind continues to build its business base through its ability to quickly react to aggressive schedules for both prototype and full-rate production programs. Its technical expertise in systems integration and ability to perform all functions of the value chain distinguish the company from its competitors.