When hundreds of thousands of lives depend on the absolute highest levels of quality, reliability, and mission readiness in your products, “close” is never enough.  

Raytheon, a giant in the defense industry, plays a vital role in the world of aerospace and defense. It provides the U.S. military and its allies with the most advanced technology and mission-critical products, including missile and missile defense systems, which keep thousands of people safe every day. These systems demand flawless performance every time, under every type of condition. To say test and measurement is a crucial element to their work would be a colossal understatement. 

Raytheon must continuously evolve to meet the defense technology requirements of its end users—requirements that are vital to national security. Jay Trovato, Associate Director of Sensors Test Engineering, and Brian Hochheim, Technical Lead for Test Equipment Engineering, are at the forefront of this evolution. They play a crucial role in leading efforts to integrate advanced technologies into Raytheon’s manufacturing processes and enhance efficiency while maintaining Raytheon’s high standards for performance, reliability, and mission readiness. 

Raytheon faced significant challenges in managing equipment utilization and test data across its global manufacturing operations. Each location operated in isolation, creating silos that hindered efficient data sharing and real-time analysis and insights. “We needed to improve the way we were collecting, managing, sharing, and ultimately using test data across the enterprise—especially in manufacturing,” said Trovato in Raytheon’s keynote presentation at the recent NI  Connect conference in Austin. 

As a global organization with manufacturing centers scattered around the world, Raytheon realized this would not be easy to accomplish on an enterprise-wide scale. “We have so many different places across the country or the world, that everybody tends to do things slightly differently—even though it might be the same type of product,” added Hochheim. 

In addition, the very critical nature of the products Raytheon manufactures meant the company would be attempting to streamline operations across multiple manufacturing sites, in a highly complex environment, while needing to maintain levels of performance, quality, reliability, and security that are simply nonnegotiable in their industry. “The stuff that we make has to work the first time, every time,” said Trovato. 

Raytheon began a thorough search for the best solution. Said Trovato, “We looked around…within the industry, and even tried some ‘home grown’ solutions…but what NI offered was almost an ‘out-of-the-box’ fit.” That solution was NI’s SystemLink.

SystemLink provides the full set of tools Raytheon needs to connect test systems and test data across disparate locations and employ real-time data analysis to improve operational efficiency. Before SystemLink, this level of integration and data accessibility was unattainable across Raytheon. 

Through a pilot implementation at two facilities in Texas and Florida (there are now five connected locations across the country), Raytheon quickly saw how SystemLink could improve manufacturing with remote software management, insights on capacity and utilization, off-station product test data, and comprehensive yield and throughput analysis. For engineering, SystemLink provides test set-to-test set correlation and performance validation to show if test methods are working. “The capability NI provides for us to look at that data and instantly analyze it from any station across the country is really incredible,” said Hochheim. 

A notable achievement during the pilot was the creation of common dashboards that can be viewed from anywhere in the company to see any individual test station connected to SystemLink. These dashboards provide uniform performance indicators, enabling consistent and informed decision-making “based on facts, not emotion,” says Trovato, who also referred to SystemLink as, “a single source of truth across manufacturing facilities.”

The partnership between NI and Raytheon has been crucial. NI’s team provided continuous support and technical expertise, ensuring SystemLink was fully utilized and effective. “For me, it’s the communication, the partnership, and the active engagement we get from NI,” offered Hochheim.  

The Raytheon team also worked closely with the NI Customer Solutions Team to drive SystemLink adoption, awareness, and proficiency across the organization. At the end of the pilot, the teams worked together to provide targeted and customized training to educate users and accelerate the rollout across the enterprise.  

As the rollout continues, Raytheon views the capabilities SystemLink provides as core to many of their internal initiatives and continues to leverage SystemLink to improve their ability to manage complex manufacturing processes across the enterprise.  

The ongoing partnership with NI will help Raytheon maintain their commitment to unwavering quality and reliability and continue to meet the demanding and exacting standards of the mission-critical industry they lead.