Discusses information technology's application to manufacturing engineering. The manufacturing machines are all networked to computer control systems. There's a huge wide area network between world-wide branches. The main office houses some old mainframes and a Sun Enterprise server. There is also a wireless network for the factory floor.
Computer aided design is company wide.
There is a stringent system of managing the updates to engine desgin and testing. A usefull part of this system is that it stores spacial information about all the parts of the current engine design so that parts may be looked at by placement in the engine itself. Brackets could now be produced in a few hours as opposed to two days with other software. The 3D solid model drives the spacial search, the manufacturing process, the testing and simulationg, and the technical publications production. Computational Fluid Dynamics - Computational tools help predict the airflow and temperature changes in the engine model.