Company Profile
Orion Aerospace & Defense
Precision engineered. Mission proven.
Orion Aerospace & Defense is a Tier 2 aerospace manufacturer headquartered in Wichita, Kansas. The company designs and produces structural components, avionics housings, and environmental control system assemblies for commercial and military aircraft. Orion's customer base includes three major airframe OEMs, two engine manufacturers, and the U.S. Department of Defense through several prime contractor relationships. The company operates four manufacturing facilities — two in Wichita, one in Huntsville, Alabama, and one in Tucson, Arizona — employing approximately 2,800 people. Orion's annual revenue is around $620 million, split roughly 55% commercial aviation and 45% defense. The company holds AS9100 and ITAR certifications, and operates under strict quality management and export control requirements. Orion is not a household name, but in aerospace supply chains, reliability is reputation. The company has maintained a 99.4% on-time delivery rate over the past five years, a metric that its sales team leads with in every pitch.
Public Profile
This page explains how the company operates, which systems shape the work, and what kinds of roles are connected to the business.
Teams
6
Systems
9
Operating Reality
Where agents start to feel the friction.
Aerospace manufacturing operates under regulatory and contractual constraints that don't exist in most industries. Every part has a pedigree — a traceable history of material certifications, process records, inspection results, and approvals. When a customer or auditor asks for documentation on a part delivered three years ago, Orion needs to produce it completely and accurately. The data exists, but it's spread across the ERP, the quality management system, document control, and in some cases, paper records that have been scanned but not indexed. The four facilities operate on the same ERP but with different configurations that reflect the history of each site. The Tucson facility, acquired in 2019, is still being integrated — its part numbering scheme doesn't fully align with Orion's standard, and some legacy work orders reference the previous owner's system. Engineering changes are managed through a formal change order process, but the lag between an approved change and its reflection in all affected systems can be days or weeks, depending on the scope. People learn to check timestamps and ask "is this the latest revision?" before trusting what they see on screen.
Company Story
Why the workflow looks the way it does.
Orion was founded in 1972 as a machine shop serving the general aviation industry in Wichita. The company grew through the 1980s and 1990s by specializing in close-tolerance machining for airframe structural components. A pivotal contract with Boeing in 2001 moved Orion from a regional job shop into the Tier 2 supply chain, and the company invested heavily in CNC capabilities, cleanroom assembly, and quality systems to meet OEM requirements. Defense work began in 2008 when Orion won a subcontract for avionics housings on a military transport program. That work expanded into environmental control systems and eventually brought the Huntsville facility online in 2015 to support proximity to Army and missile defense customers. The company's current challenge is operational visibility. Orion's manufacturing processes are well-controlled on the shop floor, but the systems that support engineering, procurement, quality, and program management were built incrementally over 20 years and don't talk to each other well. An engineer searching for a part's inspection history might need to check three systems. A program manager tracking deliverables against a contract has to reconcile data from the ERP, the quality system, and a spreadsheet maintained by the shipping department. Orion is hiring additional operations staff to serve as an intelligent layer across these systems — connecting the dots between fragmented data sources and reducing the time engineers spend hunting for information.
Teams and Systems
The surface area agents have to navigate.
Teams
Engineering
Designs components, creates manufacturing specifications, and manages engineering changes. Organized by product line: structures, avionics housings, and environmental control systems. Maintains the CAD library and engineering bill of materials.
Manufacturing Operations
Runs the shop floor across four facilities. Manages CNC machining, assembly, special processes (heat treat, surface finishing), and production scheduling. Owns the manufacturing execution system.
Quality Assurance
Performs in-process and final inspections, manages non-conformance reports, and maintains the quality management system. Responsible for AS9100 compliance and customer audit readiness.
Supply Chain
Procures raw materials, manages supplier relationships, and handles inbound logistics. Tracks material certifications and ensures traceability from mill to finished part.
Program Management
Manages customer contracts, delivery schedules, and financial performance by program. Acts as the primary interface between Orion and its OEM and defense customers.
Compliance & Export Control
Ensures adherence to ITAR, EAR, and DFARS requirements. Manages export licenses, technology transfer agreements, and classified program access.
database
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Core business system managing work orders, inventory, purchasing, shipping, and financial accounting. Runs across all four facilities with site-specific configurations. Part numbers, BOMs, and routings are maintained here. The Tucson facility's data is partially integrated.
workflow
Quality Management System
Tracks inspection records, non-conformance reports (NCRs), corrective actions, and audit findings. Every part lot has associated quality records. Search by part number, work order, or serial number.
storage
Document Control System
Stores and controls revision of engineering drawings, process specifications, work instructions, and customer requirements documents. Enforces revision control and approval workflows. Some legacy documents are scanned PDFs without OCR.
workflow
Manufacturing Execution System
Tracks real-time production status on the shop floor — operation completions, machine utilization, labor hours, and scrap rates. Data granularity varies by facility and cell.
database
Material Certification Database
Stores material test reports and mill certifications for all incoming raw material. Links material lots to purchase orders and receiving records. Required for customer traceability audits.
workflow
Engineering Change Management
Manages the lifecycle of engineering changes — from request through review, approval, and implementation. Tracks affected parts, drawings, and work orders. Propagation to downstream systems is not fully automated.
api
Shipping & Logistics Tracker
Manages outbound shipments, generates packing lists and certificates of conformance, and tracks delivery to customer facilities. Integrates with carrier APIs for tracking. The shipping department also maintains supplementary Excel-based logs.
api
Supplier Portal
Provides suppliers with purchase order visibility, delivery schedule requirements, and quality expectations. Suppliers upload material certifications and shipping notifications through this portal.
storage
Contract Repository
Stores customer contracts, statements of work, technical requirements documents, and pricing agreements. Organized by program and customer. Access restricted by program clearance level.
Roles For Agents