Kitty Hawk Aeronautics (KHA) Business Plan

1. Business Overview

Kitty Hawk Aeronautics, Inc. (KHA) was founded in 1981 as a privately-held corporation to provide avionics and telemetry products and services to the United States Department of Defense (DOD).

KHA is headquartered in Elizabeth City, NC and now has manufacturing and support facilities in five locations throughout the U.S.

In addition to the primary KHA product lines, production and after-market electronic parts and assemblies are manufactured for numerous defense services, NASA, FAA, and commercial aerospace products.

Figure 1: KHA Business Locations

2. Executive Team Profile

The President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Kitty Hawk Aeronautics, Inc. is Dwight Hendricks.  Mr. Hendricks joined KHA in 2005 and is responsible for two significant KHA strategic initiatives; 1) the KHA Knowledge Management Plan, and 2) the KHA Enterprise Architecture (EA) initiative.

Susan Martinez joined KHA in 2004 to become its first Chief Information Officer.  Ms. Martinez since has hired Robert Osborn to fill the position of Chief Architect in support of the KHA EA strategic initiative.

The KHA Executive Leadership team also includes senior management representing the areas of the Chief Operations Officer, operational lines-of-business, finance, human resources, and contracts and legal.

3. Relationship of Business Activities to Strategic Goals

The business activities of Kitty Hawk Aeronautics are intended to align with the goals and initiatives provided by the Executive Leadership in the KHA Strategic Plan.  Four operational lines-of-business support the development and production of KHA products and services:

• Commercial Aviation Systems

• Defense Systems

• Space Systems

• Research and Development.

The KHA corporate office and operational lines-of-business are provided services by four internal support lines-of-business:

• Finance and Administration

• Technology Support

• Contracts and Legal

• Shipping and Receiving.

Figure 2: KHA Business Context

The Executive Leadership team has provided a KHA 2007-2010 Strategic Plan that includes several strategic goals intended to grow the KHA product and service offerings, increase profitability, and improve performance:

• Increase profit by at least 7% per year

• Establish a customer base in Asia/Europe for the Commercial Aviation line of business

• Establish a “General Aviation Systems” line of business

• Control costs by establishing activity based cost accounting in all lines of business

• Improve the value of investments in information technology

In addition to the above KHA strategic goals, the operational and support lines-of-business continue to support a number of ongoing KHA strategic initiatives.

4. Organizational

Figure 3: KHA Organization Chart

The Commercial Aviations Systems line-of-business provides products and services for aircraft manufacturers and commercial air carriers.

• The Defense Systems line-of-business provides products and services to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD.)

• The Space Systems line-of-business provides products and services to NASA and other U.S. government agencies and also to commercial satellite technology providers.

• The Research and Development line-of-business provides product design and manufacturing technology support using the requirements provided by the KHA operational lines-of-business.

• The Shipping and Receiving line-of-business provides logistics support to the operational and support lines-of-business.

• The Finance and Administration line-of-business provides accounting, banking, investment, payroll, human resource, and sales and marketing services to KHA.

• The Technology Support line-of-business manages KHA IT resources.

5. Market Outlook and Competitive Strategy

Kitty Hawk Aeronautics has continually solidified and expanded both its product lines and revenue streams.  The current KHA Strategic Plan sets a new goal of increasing profitability by seven percent per year through 2010.  This goal will be accomplished through the implementation of the following strategic initiatives:

• Implementation of Activity-Based accounting for all lines-of-business

• Improved value of KHA IT investments through the implementation of a KHA Enterprise Architecture (EA)

• The expansion of the Commercial Aviation line-of-business by establishing new customer bases in Asia and Europe

• The establishment of a new line-of-business “General Aviation Systems”.

6. Business Cycles

KHA Defense Systems and Space Systems lines-of-business activities are determined by requests for proposals (RFP) and contracts established with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and NASA.  The Commercial Aviation Systems line-of-business activities are determined by the needs for new airplane production by aircraft manufacturers and for replacement and service of the products provided this KHA line-of-business.

Corporate and line-of-business planning is a function of the Executive Leadership team.  Under the direction of the Executive Leadership, the cooperate office and line-of-business organizations cooperatively implement the governance processes supporting the KHA enterprise.

Figure 4: KHA Process Node Diagram

7. Capitalization Summary

8. Financial Strategy

9. Current Financial Status Summary

10. Business Partnerships and Alliances