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Industrial Tecnnology Utah’s technology sector is industrial as well as software and e-commerce related. Rocket motors, aircraft control systems, airbags that use rocket propellant to inflate in milliseconds, satellites, composite materials, aircraft and missile turbines, are some of the products of Utah’s hard-hat technology industry. The 300 or so businesses in the transportation equipment, instruments, electrical/electronic equipment, and industrial machinery/equipment sectors contribute over 2.3 billion to Utah’s economy. (As contrasted to 2,400 businesses in the 7.7 billion high-tech goods and services arena.)
Utah’s "hard-hat, high-tech" industrial technology is unique in the nation.
Transportation equipment takes on a whole new meaning — rocket motors, gas turbine aircraft engines, automobile airbags…. We have two world-class rocket motor production facilities in Alcola’s Thiokol Propulsion division and Alliant Techsystems (ATK). Outgrowths of these businesses include carbon fiber composites and automobile air bags. " At Autoliv the same pyrotechnic knowledge and ballistic expertise that Thiokol and ATK use in their rocket motors goes to produce airbags that inflate in milliseconds." (Steven Oberbeck, Salt Lake Tribune, Dec 3, 2000). Autoliv has 6,000 high-wage manufacturing jobs in Utah and Thiokol Propulsion has 5,300. ATK spends $90 million that on goods and services.
Both MOOG Aircraft and Parker Hannifin produce precision motion control components and systems for the aerospace industry and Williams International produces small gas- turbine aircraft engines in "the most modern and efficient gas turbine manufacturing facility in the world". |
