If I want to use fancy RP names for stuff, rather than a short description of what it does, I look at the Wikipedia pages for various warships. Generally you can see that various companies make similar parts, although then I loose myself in reading through loads of wiki pages =p.
For example in British ships Rolls-Royce makes engines, BAE does guns and sensor systems, and Ultra Electronics does fire control systems, if you use an American theme then it would be General Electric, Lockheed Martin, etc, etc.
Of course then you need to come up with a name for that model of a part, which I always had trouble with, hence my falling back on numbers and letters to describe what a part does =)