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GE Aircraft Engines needed that kind of enthusiasm when it began its modern-day equivalent of the Manhattan Project in early 1999. The order had just come from General Electric Chairman Jack Welch: Get with the Net before it gets you. And do it immediately. Aircraft-engine division chief W. James McNerney plucked Rosenfeld from his job at Lexmark International Group in Kentucky -- where he had launched the printer company's Web shop -- and put him in charge of the project. "It was the leadership, the risk-taking, the entrepreneurial spirit that attracted me," McNerney says of Rosenfeld. "It's infectious." Rosenfeld hasn't disappointed. A year after he was hired, the man whose only experience with planes was jumping out of them has put the aircraft division online. Airline customers that buy GE engines and parts can now access millions of pages of information on their products via the Web. They can order parts and spare engines. And they can work with GE engineers to analyze parts that have been sent to the repair shop in order to decide if the work is worth doing. "This is extremely exciting stuff," says Pat Wildenburg, head of purchasing for Delta Air Lines Inc. "The value will come over time." GUNG-HO GUY. So far, just one customer is fully integrated with the site -- Airfoil Technology Services of Singapore. Now Rosenfeld's priority is to persuade others to make the changes necessary to link their back-end ordering and billing systems to GE. "We built the pieces, now we've got to get them working," he says. "It's not an instant switch on and off. There's some process engineering that has to occur at our customers to fully incur the benefits of what we've done." It's heady stuff for a 32-year-old former Army captain who had just three years of business experience before joining the aircraft-engine division. Rosenfeld spent seven years in the Army after college and calls it the perfect job for a guy. "I blew things up, jumped out of planes, shot guns, traveled to exotic lands. What more could you ask for?" says Rosenfeld. He served in Operation Desert Storm, but his unit didn't see combat. But the Army was tough on family life. Because he often took part in secret operations, he couldn't tell his wife how long he might be away on duty, or even where he was going. When the couple became the parents of twin boys, Rosenfeld decided it was time to rejoin the civilian world. His first job out of a uniform was with GE's appliance division in Louisville, Ky. Since the mid-1990s, the corporation has looked to the military for recruits. Their leadership, discipline, and ability to work in teams fits snugly with the GE way. It didn't take long for Rosenfeld to get hooked on the Internet. While a production manager on a refrigerator line, he started studying at night for a master's degree in engineering through a distance-learning program offered by Purdue University. He chose an Internet course as an elective and decided he didn't need a master's after that. "I loved every second of it. I couldn't get enough," he says. "I felt like all of a sudden I had found my calling." His career has been on a rocket trajectory since. At his first stop after GE appliances, at Lexmar, he combined his Web and leadership skills to build an Internet unit. When he arrived, it was selling about $10,000 in printers a month online, he says. Rosenfeld helped Lexmark build B2B Web sites, and when he left, online sales were up to $500,000 a month -- a significant chunk of change in the printer business. OPPOSITES ATTRACT. Back at GE, he has been doing pretty much the same -- but on a larger scale. And he has jumped two management levels in the process, a leap that he says typically can take 5 to 10 years. But Rosenfeld hasn't done it alone. McNerney teamed him with David Overbeeke, a GE veteran who had built up the lucrative services side of the aircraft-engine division. Rosenfeld knew the info technology, Overbeeke the engine business -- and together they created an online channel. "He knew our industry like the back of his hand, but he didn't know the difference between a Palm Pilot and a Netscape browser, and I didn't know the difference between an HPT blade and an LPT blade," jokes Rosenfeld. "So we shared with each other, complemented each other's strengths and weaknesses." The first six months, starting in July, 1999, was the see-what-you-can-build stage. Then the team set the kind of targets that would make a drill sergeant beg for mercy. They're trying to shift $1 billion of the company's $11 billion in annual sales to the Web, generate $250 million in new revenue, and slash $100 million in costs by yearend. At the end of September, Rosenfeld says $515 million in sales this calendar year have moved online, and the e-division has generated $32 million in new revenue. "We're still at the bottom of the mountain," he says. But judging from progress so far, he won't need an Army Huey helicopter to take him to the top. Keenan covers e-business for Business Week in New York |
