Boeing [NYSE:BA] announced its nine 2008 Suppliers of the Year, which were chosen from among the company's 10,800 active suppliers worldwide.

The winners, from California, Florida, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington, were judged on quality, delivery performance, cost, environmental initiatives, customer service and technical expertise. Four are small businesses as defined by the U.S. government.

The winners, and their categories, are:

* AMI Metals Inc. (Brentwood, Tenn.) for common aerospace commodities

* DigiPen Institute of Technology (Redmond, Wash.) for technology

* Exotic Metals Forming Company LLC (Kent, Wash.) for outside production

* Fort Walton Machining Inc. (Fort Walton Beach, Fla.) for diversity/veteran-owned small business

* Nucsafe Inc. (Oak Ridge, Tenn.) for diversity/small business

* PECO Inc. (Portland, Ore.) for interiors

* Sequoyah Electric LLC (Redmond, Wash.) for non-production

* Southern California Braiding Company Inc (Bell Gardens, Calif.) for diversity/HUB zone small business

* Sunvair (Valencia, Calif.) for aerospace support

"These suppliers demonstrated outstanding productivity and performance in the past year and exemplify the characteristics that we expect," said Steve Schaffer, Boeing enterprise leader of Supplier Management and vice president and general manager of Supplier Management for Boeing Commercial Airplanes.

Before being chosen as a Supplier of the Year, each company was named as one of the 411 recipients of a Boeing Performance Excellence Award. For information on the 2008 Boeing Performance Excellence Award visit www.boeing.com/bpea.