TRW Unit in Redondo to Be Closed

TRW Inc. said Thursday that it is shutting down its Electronic Test Systems Skills Center in Redondo Beach, a 160-person unit involved in testing spacecraft instruments.

The company said “30 to 60” employees would be transferred to San Diego County as part of an adjustment to “this era of defense spending restraints.”

“TRW will make every effort to place the remaining employees in other jobs in TRW operations in Redondo Beach or elsewhere,” said spokeswoman Montye Male. “We expect that other assignments will absorb a significant portion of them. It is unnecessary for us to move all the people down there, because we have people” in San Diego.

Male said the operations of the Redondo Beach unit will be merged with TRW’s Military Electronics and Avionics Division, which employs 800 people in Rancho Carmel in San Diego County.

Both units are part of TRW’s Space and Defense Sector, which has 18,000 employees in the South Bay.

The consolidation of similar units will save TRW money because the company expects that “concentrations of skills in one area will decrease our costs,” Male said.

She declined to estimate how much would be saved, saying that planning is not yet complete.

“In the next two weeks,” Male said, “we will be identifying precisely what folks we’ll ask to move.”

She added that the consolidation is the only one that TRW could identify now.

“The company will look at other opportunities” to merge similar operations, she said. “We won’t preclude that there won’t be other consolidations and moves.”