GPS Navigating Concept Aids Manufacturing Process

More than 10 years ago, two professors and a graduate student at Virginia Tech began tinkering with Global Positioning System technology, trying to find out if the navigation tool could guide a drill inside a factory as well as it guides a submarine under the sea.

Eventually, they took the GPS concept and collapsed it from a global system to a local one, which is employed inside the manufacturing facilities of the biggest airplane, auto and ship builders in the world. As the technology that developed around the GPS has leapt from military to civilian use, it is changing the way companies build their products.

Arc Second http://www.arcsecond.com/

By Ellen McCarthy

Full Story: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/08/AR2005060802771.html