Aitech Defense Systems, the world's first and largest independent manufacturer of board and subsystem level products for harsh environment defense, aerospace and astronautics applications, today announced that William Spires, Jr. has joined the company as vice president of operations. Spires will oversee all aspects of the manufacturing and procurement processes for Aitech's extensive line of rugged computers and subsystems optimized for harsh environments. This will include management of the company's assembly, quality and testing, planning and purchasing departments.

A veteran of the Military market, Spires has held various management positions throughout the industry for more than two decades. As a LEAN Black Belt, he has successfully implemented LEAN, Six Sigma and 5S organizational methodologies throughout his career. Most recently, he was director of manufacturing for Curtiss-Wright, where he was responsible for the operations of many manufacturing functions. He also served as general manager for several high tech companies serving the military, embedded computing and industrial markets.

Aitech CEO Roger Rowe stated, “Bill combines a long history of high tech and military experience with proven management and process building expertise. This will serve our customers well as we continue to be an industry leader in production efficiency product quality.”

Spires' affiliations with several industry associations, including AUSA, NDIA, SME and IPC, have further broadened his knowledge of the electronics and military industries. His educational background includes structural engineering at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and business management at the University of Phoenix. Spires is certified as both an AS9100 Auditor and an ISO Auditor.

For more information please call 888-Aitech-8 (248-3248), visit www.rugged.com, or

e-mail sales@rugged.com.

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About Aitech

Established in 1983, Aitech offers military and space-qualified, commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products for rugged defense, aerospace and astronautics (space) applications as well as radiation tolerant and MIL-SPEC solutions. The company provides VMEbus and CompactPCI boards, power subsystems, mass memory, enclosures and hardware subsystem integration along with configuration and component Obsolescence management services.

Having pioneered the development of true military VME products for use in mainstream COTS applications, Aitech utilizes its broad base of off-the-shelf products and technologies to develop customer-specific solutions, deliver superior cost-performance and reliability, and expedite time to market. Applications for its products range from mission processors, fire control and mission control subsystems for ground vehicles as well as surface and subsurface naval platforms to tactical and strategic fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, and low- to high-earth orbit and deep space vehicles.