BUSINESS CHALLENGES
Pacific Defense began as an innovative and agile engineering company focused on turning customer problems into solutions, moving from concept to prototype at a rapid pace. The company has perfected research and system design, actively championing open architecture and standards so customers have flexibility and adaptability. Pacific Defense recently has applied adaptability to its own business model, extending its services into building and delivering technologies to the market. The move has paid dividends, with a recent acquisition by Pacific Defense and a growing list of commercialized products in addition to their continued custom design services.
During concept and prototype phases of product development, rapid-fire creativity and problem-solving are key. Control over product definition is minimal. “You can do a lot of the early-concept design work in small teams within engineering tools and, yes, email and spreadsheets,” said Vicky Orozco, Sr. Document Control Specialist at Pacific Defense. “We had a homegrown sourcing utility that interfaced with one of our design tools and everyone did things differently.”
Pacific Defense quickly realized that with the expansion of the company’s scope to manufacturing, people, processes, and systems would be needed. “We asked ourselves: What must we do to support this revolution?” shared Vicky. “We need to deliver these leading-edge technologies that have rapid change cycles to our customers. It was immediately evident we needed a single-source system, a product lifecycle and quality management system.”
With product commercialization came additional requirements, specifically from Pacific Defense’s defense customers. Pacific Defense needed to have a secure, controlled process for managing product, undergoing customer risk-based assessment audits, and demonstrating thorough configuration management practices.
