BLAIRSVILLE, Pa., 18 March 2005. Lockheed Martin's facility in Blairsville recently joined Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) in accepting an award for their entry in the National Small Business Institute Case of the Year competition.
The award recognized work with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technologies to meet the Defense Department's requirement for tracking materials shipped to its facilities.
RFID is a method of remotely storing and retrieving data using devices called RFID tags, a small object that can be attached to or incorporated into a product.
The Small Business Institute Directors' Association sponsors the Case of the Year competition to recognize outstanding student work on field cases. Lockheed Martin has worked with IUP's Small Business Institute on 13 projects in the past four and a half years to mentor students and provide them with "real-life" experiences in the classroom.
"This partnership benefits not only IUP, its students, faculty and staff, but also Lockheed Martin's future," said John Jaworski, a 1992 IUP graduate and operations manager at Lockheed Martin's facility in Blairsville. "About 95 percent of the students in this program become interested in pursuing a career at Lockheed Martin when they graduate. The student's work is very impressive."
The Small Business Institute gathers highly educated, motivated students from the university's Eberly College of Business and Information Technology and matches their skills with the needs of requesting organizations in areas such as accounting, finance, marketing, management, and others.
Headquartered in Bethesda, Md., Lockheed Martin employs about 130,000 people worldwide and is principally engaged in the research, design, development, manufacture and integration of advanced technology systems, products and services. The corporation reported 2004 sales of $35.5 billion. For more information, see www.lockheedmartin.com.
