SALT LAKE CITY, Aug. 14, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) is celebrating 50 years of developing high technology products at its Salt Lake City manufacturing plant.

The company's 650 Salt Lake City employees took part in a special ceremony on August 14 to commemorate the anniversary.

The advanced technology Salt Lake City plant, located at 2211 West North Temple, is the largest manufacturing facility within Northrop Grumman's Woodland Hills, Calif.-based Navigation Systems Division, which also includes engineering and manufacturing facilities in Pomezia, Italy, Freiburg, Germany and Woodland Hills. The facility opened in 1958 with 60,000 square feet of space and has since grown to approximately one quarter million square feet of engineering, laboratory, manufacturing and office space.

The Salt Lake City plant manufactures inertial navigation systems for fighters, transport planes, commercial aircraft, helicopters, ground vehicles, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The plant also manufactures helicopter and aircraft avionics systems; guidance systems for missiles and torpedoes; fiber-optic arrays for underwater listening; and stabilization systems. The plant also supports and services legacy products and systems.

The entire facility is configured around work cells to facilitate lean production. The flexible factory arrangement allows for efficient production of a large product mix by enabling quick movement from product to product without reconfiguring the production line.

In the 1960s, the plant primarily produced only the inertial instruments for navigation systems. A decade later, the plant became responsible for building, testing and integrating these instruments into complete navigation system solutions. In the 1980s and 1990s, the plant grew to support new inertial technologies such as ring laser gyroscopes, zero-lock(tm) gyroscopes, fiber-optic gyroscopes and accelerometers. In the 1990s to present, the plant added manufacturing and test capability for complex electrical assemblies, general avionic systems, sophisticated displays and underwater acoustic systems.

"One of the unique aspects of our site is the wide range of products that are built, tested, and delivered to our customers for use on many different platforms with unique requirements and capabilities," said Eric Maier, Northrop Grumman site director. "No other provider of navigation and situational awareness products can address the challenges that so many of our customers are demanding."

Northrop Grumman Corporation is a global defense and technology company whose 120,000 employees provide innovative systems, products, and solutions in information and services, electronics, aerospace and shipbuilding to government and commercial customers worldwide. 

  CONTACT:  Don Barteld
          Northrop Grumman Electronic Systems 
          (818) 712-6179
          don.barteld@ngc.com