How AlliedSignal's Engine business unit is succeeding with CORBA and Object Technology

Wayne Haughey, AlliedSignal

AlliedSignal, Inc. is a Fortune 100 company with global interests in Aerospace, Automotive, and Engineered Materials. Just over two and one-half years ago the Engines Information Systems department introduced a new vision for their information systems incorporating object technology, web deployment, distributed re-usable components, and open standards. The motivation for implementing such a revolutionary change, as opposed to their historical mainframe environment, was to improve internal processes, reduce application development time, and provide their business customers with a more flexible set of tools capable of enabling rapid change.

As a first step the company sought partnerships with organizations experienced in object technology, starting with methodologies for requirements analysis and design. This led to the establishment of an application framework based on OMG specifications which provided the fundamental building blocks of application development. Some of the higher-level specifications presented some special challenges which AlliedSignal was able to overcome.

The presentation will cover the company's experience in mounting this learning curve and some of the early results including an award-winning tracking system, a vacation time planning system and, just now coming into production, the first mission-critical business system reusing the new framework. Wayne Haughey, Group Leader at AlliedSignal, was responsible for the delivery of this new approach and will discuss the issues, successful solutions and some of the residual challenges that need to be addressed when designing, constructing, and implementing information system solutions to business problems.