By Michael Watkins

Photo by Paul Marlow, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
Award winner -Rockwell Collins Technical Project Manager Gary Green received the Rockwell Collins Open Innovator Award for the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2008.

It wasn't that long ago that Gary Green was making computer chips at Texas Instruments in Stafford, Texas - all the while dreaming of doing so much more.

A manufacturing technician who, at the time, was attending night school, Green spent his days working on small, integrated circuit chips. But the almost daily interaction he had with engineers - coupled with his interest in learning more about their work - prompted him to thumb through a set of manufacturing blueprints.

Fascinated and nearly mesmerized by what he saw, Green decided at that moment what he wanted to do with the rest of his professional life, and that decision is finally paying dividends.

"I've always liked building and making things, so I was leaning toward engineering before I really knew what it was," said Green, who holds both Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the University of Missouri-Rolla. "Once I got around the engineers and saw the work they were doing, I knew that was what I wanted to be doing, too."

Today, Green is a member of the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) product line team at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Since joining our company in July of 1996, he has helped advance and increase the versatility and precision of our GPS products.

His innovative, forward-thinking is what prompted our company to honor him with the Rockwell Collins Open Innovator Award for the second quarter of Fiscal Year 2008.

"Being recognized for this honor is something I never thought would happen," said Green, who was honored for bringing NavCom StarFire^TM  technologies into our company for use in high dynamic fighter environments. "To be singled out is really exciting."

Tractors and targets
A leading pioneer in GPS technologies, NavCom Technologies - a wholly-owned subsidiary of John Deere, Inc. - already uses its StarFire network in precision agriculture and construction equipment.

The Open Innovator Award program recognizes those who practice open innovation by bringing external sources of technology and innovation into our company to accelerate business growth and create a competitive discriminator in the marketplace.

Open Innovator award winners

According to Gary McGraw, a principal systems engineer in our Advanced Technology Center, integrating NavCom's Global Differential GPS (G-DGPS) service into our product line provides 20 centimeter accuracy for range instrumentation systems and helps differentiate our company from our competitors.

"Developing this capability internally would have been extremely costly, and also would have required more expertise than we have inside Rockwell Collins," said McGraw, who nominated Green for the award. "Gary worked closely with NavCom and other subcontractors, and was able to bring this technology into our company."

Rockwell Collins' existing GPS expertise - coupled with NavCom - also led to the creation of the Common Range Integrated Instrumentation System (CRIIS) pursuit, which will ultimately develop the next-generation Department of Defense (DoD) Time Space Position Information (TSPI) system for both testing and training. CRIIS technology will test airplane GPS navigation systems to extreme accuracy.

"We looked at several different suppliers, but the more we researched, it was clear that NavCom was a great fit for our needs," said Green, who credits McGraw with the idea for collaborating with John Deere. "The government has test ranges all over the United States that test artillery and accuracy of weapon delivery. NavCom integration improves GPS delivery accuracy tremendously and improves navigation."

Benefiting our entire company
While the integration of NavCom technologies into Rockwell Collins products should ultimately result in significant revenue for our company, the payoff may come beyond the governmental side of our business.

"The use of Global Differential GPS provides a solution that requires substantially less ground infrastructure than competing approaches, thus providing superior value for CRIIS customers," said McGraw. "This benefits NavCom and Rockwell Collins since the development for the CRIIS TSPI applications opens the door for applying these developments in new commercial market segments."

While the CRIIS program is giving our company the technology to provide new opportunities for business, it's giving Green his time in the spotlight for his ingenuity, forward-thinking, and opportunistic innovation.

"This is by far the highlight of my career," said Green. "I'm excited to be a part of this project and the future of Rockwell Collins."

- Michael Watkins is a freelance writer.