Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne named South Florida Manufacturer of Year

RP news wires

The South Florida Manufacturers Association (SFMA) named Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne in West Palm Beach the 2009 "Manufacturer of the Year" in the large company category at its annual Recognition of Excellence Awards Banquet. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne is a unit of United Technologies Corporation.

The Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne facility in West Palm Beach designs, manufactures and tests space propulsion and hypersonic propulsion systems. These include the RL10 upper-stage rocket engine for Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, the high-pressure liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen turbopumps for the Space Shuttle Main Engine and the scramjet engine for the X-51A WaveRider hypersonic aircraft.

"This is a great honor for PWR, and it shows that our peers in the community recognize the quality and customer focus of our business and our employees," said Joe Sylvestro, vice president for operations and supply management, Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. "It also illustrates our commitment to continuous improvement. We were recognized as one of three finalists in our category at the 2008 award banquet. This year, we were recognized as the winner at the 2009 performance award ceremony.

The awards recognize excellence in manufacturing, with recipients selected based on factors such as leadership, strategic planning, process management, customer focus, metrics analysis, knowledge management and employee engagement.

Tom Kennedy, executive director, SFMA, said, "It is evident that there is a culture of continuous improvement throughout Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. In addition, the company does an impressive job of looking at entire value streams rather than just individual processes."

Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Inc., a part of Pratt & Whitney, is a preferred provider of high-value propulsion, power, energy and innovative system solutions used in a wide variety of government and commercial applications, including the main engines for the space shuttle, Atlas and Delta launch vehicles, missile defense systems and advanced hypersonic engines.

Pratt & Whitney is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of aircraft engines, space propulsion systems and industrial gas turbines. United Technologies, based in Hartford, Conn., is a diversified company providing high technology products and services to the global aerospace and commercial building industries. 

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