About Us

It is our goal at Alliant Technologies to deploy software and control systems that are scalable, repeatable and exceed customer expectations for performance and ease of use utilizing non-proprietary off the shelf hardware.  We believe our attention to detail and commitment to customer satisfaction is what sets Alliant apart from our competition.

Key members of Alliant Technologies include...

Richard Crawford- President

Electrical Engineering/Computer Engineering degree Purdue University, Rich has 11 years experience specializing in upper level software development for the material handling industry.  Rich spent four years as project engineer for SNE Systems in Louisville Ky.  With the next four years as Manager of the software department.  In these positions Rich was responsible for development of the upper level software for a multitude of Baggage Handling, Freight and Parcel, Warehouse, and Postal projects.  Serving as the lead software engineer for the UPS Hub 2000 ($60M controls project), he continued with FKI Logistex to serve as Vice President for Program Management for 1.5 years, and as Vice President Airport Systems for an additional 1.5 years leading this team to develop and deploy the sort control and MDS systems for several large scale Baggage Handling Projects.

Philip Heacock- Director Airport Systems

Electrical Engineering Degree from Speed Scientific School-University of Louisville, 17 years experience with material handling systems.  Starting as a technician with UPS for the Air Hub Control System which included fiber optic networks and PC based machine control.  Followed by 12 years with Louisville based controls distributor with responsibilities that included: control panel fabrication, VFD/Servo/PLC System design, application engineering, 4 years Sales & Management, 6 years Manager of Drive Systems Division that included overall responsibilities for controls and drives products for multiple facilities.  Joining FKI Logistex as Manager of the Software and Controls Sales Team in 2001, initial focus was across all vertical markets until 2002 moving to 100% Baggage Handling.  Serving the last two years as Director, Airport Systems, responsible for Baggage Handling Systems for North America, with specific expertise in RFID Baggage Handling Systems.

Greg Zinner- Director Controls Engineering

Greg has 25 years experience in material handling industry.  Attended the University of Kentucky, began a 17 year career with Interlake Material Handling as a draftsman in 1978.  Spent over 10 years as a controls engineer, one year in applications engineering and finally 5 years in project management.  In 1995 Greg moved to SNE Systems as the Controls Engineering Manager, and was the project lead for the smalls area on Hub2000.  In 2000 with the FKI acquisition, Greg became responsible for all PLC software standardization, organizing the coding structure he created repeatable modules easily transferred and maintained by any engineer on the team.  Major Airport Projects: TPA, IAH, IND, OKC, ATL South, LAS.

Our Skill sets include: 

Controls Engineering: Our team excels in PLC programming, primarily due to the experience level of our staff, these are senior engineers with over 40 years experience between them.  Their experience covers 5 different PLC platforms, and our engineering Director was responsible for programming standards in his previous post and has experience a multitude of large airport Baggage Handling Systems.  The team has experience with the consultants, EDS interfaces, and know what it takes to meet the Battelle testing requirements.

Software engineering:  Our software team sets us apart from our competition, due to the depth in upper level control system design.  Our broad experience gives us experience at practically every software and interface level, which helps to keep our cost in line when the specification calls for something not previously done in an airport, someone with knowledge gives input and avoids the guess work and risk dollars.  Rich Crawford was responsible for the SCADA / MDS on a project with 20,000 drives.  This project pulled together equipment from over 20 different manufacturers, giving the same touch and feel for all equipment attached to the systems.  This gives us the experience and capability of deploying large-scale systems with confidence.  Our Sort Allocation Computer is state of the art, currently utilizing Microsoft Clustering, we are evaluating the NEC fault tolerant solution for a specific customer.  Our team members previously participated in the deployment of Sort Allocation Systems on projects in ATL, JAX, LAS, IAD and others.  We understand the upper level interface to both the Airline and or CUTE based systems.  Alliant Technologies has Direct RFID experience with a factory trained engineer that has deployed several systems.