Case Study: Northrop Grumman

Business Profile:
Northrop Grumman Corporation's Integrated Systems sector is a premier aerospace and defense systems integration enterprise. One of six sectors of Northrop Grumman, Integrated Systems has the capabilities to design, develop, produce and support fully missionized integrated systems and subsystems and delivers products and services for battlespace awareness, command and control systems and integrated combat systems.

Building on a proud legacy as a major contributor to the national and international defense aircraft world markets, the sector's products and services range from the world's most advanced bomber, the B-2 stealth, to the airborne early warning technology of the E-2C Hawkeye and the advanced surveillance expertise on manned systems such as the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (Joint STARS) and unmanned systems such as Global Hawk.

The Objective:
Northrop Grumman Integrated Systems employs 12,000 people across more than 15 locations in the United States. A major goal of the sector is to leverage the collective wisdom of its employees to enhance innovation, responsiveness, and customer service, especially as employees move in and out of major programs. For example, after the B2 bomber program was winding down, of the 17,000 people who worked on it, only 1,700 people were going to stay on to support it. The ability to find the people who worked on the B2 was critical for aircraft maintenance. However, geographical and organizational barriers often impede people's ability to quickly find and connect with their company counterparts beyond their immediate team or personal network. This leads to redundant effort, rework, missed opportunities, and delays - all of which can be avoided with Tacit.

The importance of connecting people was further emphasized by an extensive knowledge audit conducted in the sector's Air Combat Systems business area. The survey's findings included:

• The #1 source of knowledge is people. 51% of respondents said that the primary repository for best practices, experiences, and lessons learned in the organization was the minds of other employees. This overwhelmed the 16% of respondents who said electronic documents were their primary source, the No. 2-ranked category.



• The average employee spends at least 4-8 hours per week searching for information or knowledge to help them complete work.



• It is estimated that the inability to find relevant knowledge could cost the Air Combat Systems business area up to $150 million annually.

Why Northrop Grumman chose Tacit Software:
Northrop Grumman chose Tacit because of the technology's ability to automatically discover expertise, be continuously up-to-date, and help people stay connected even as they moved onto new projects. Northrop Grumman initially deployed to 450 people, but saw such significant time and cost savings over a three-month period, they decided to deploy Tacit across the entire sector.

		Using Tacit allowed one user to locate another experienced resource from another organizational sector and to deploy that resource onto a project within one day. Northrop Grumman was able to avoid project delays and directly save an estimated $50,000 in re-work because the right person was found to do the job.
		Northrop Grumman uses Tacit to help with staffing new program contracts. The staffing process used to take 6-12 weeks, however the use of Tacit has helped reduce that time to less than 4 weeks! This time savings has increased the organizations ability to respond more quickly to customer staffing requirements and to realize significant scheduling cost savings.

To learn more about how Tacit can work for you or to schedule a demo