Michael
W. Parks

Engineering intranet, Lockheed (mid-1980s–early 1990s)

Like most large corporations, Lockheed ran its business systems on proprietary networks from IBM, HP, and DEC. Alongside them, we maintained a company-wide Unix network over Ethernet where engineers could communicate and collaborate using open technologies: TCP/IP, FTP sites, and later Gopher and early hypertext documents viewed in text-based browsers.

We packaged these tools into a formal suite used by the engineering community, outside the proprietary business systems. In 1993 I set up a web server with HTML pages and linked images, viewed in the brand-new Mosaic browser, and we called the Mosaic team at NCSA with questions. It was one of the earliest corporate intranets, built on open standards years before the term existed.

Shop floor management system, Lockheed, Marietta (late 1980s–early 1990s)

As group engineer, I led the design of a prototype shop floor management system for the C-130 and F-22 assembly lines in Lockheed’s B-1 building. Both programs shared the same work instruction, tooling, and scheduling systems, so my team built one common platform: touch screen X terminals on the floor, backed by DEC servers, putting real-time production information in the hands of the mechanics building the aircraft.

The floor adopted it quickly, and mechanics helped us demonstrate it to senior military and executive visitors. We also connected it to the emerging Internet so walk-ups could check weather forecasts and other information, and people used the terminals at all hours of the night. It anticipated much of what the industry later called manufacturing execution systems.

Center for Manufacturing Information Technology, Georgia Tech (1994–2004)

Small and mid-size Georgia manufacturers needed ERP, CAD/CAM, and bar coding, but had few neutral ways to evaluate them. I founded CMIT within Georgia Tech’s Economic Development Institute: an 8,000 square foot “virtual teaching factory” with a working shop floor (CNC mill and lathe, assembly and inspection benches, conveyor, inventory tracking, and data collection), a front office organized around engineering, accounting, scheduling, and CAM, and a 17-seat networked training room. The shop floor ran a live process: wagon parts designed in the front office, CNC programs downloaded to the floor, and jobs tracked through machining and assembly with touch-screen terminals, bar coding, and a wireless inventory network feeding data back to the office. Vendors partnered with us so visiting management teams could see systems running and choose technology suited to their own processes.

Working with Georgia Tech’s regional offices and Georgia Power’s Technology Application Center, I held workshops across the state on topics from ERP selection to “Internet for Manufacturers,” and opened a videoconferencing center linking Georgia companies with engineers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. In late 1994 I built CMIT’s website, one of the earliest at Georgia Tech; a 1996 snapshot is still on the Wayback Machine. Most people don’t know that the Buzz Electronics Lean Overview course taught all over the US by MEP Centers and others for almost three decades was literally invented here at CMIT right on this shop floor. That’s why it was named “Buzz” Electronics.