Latest / The Decision Advantage / Driving Innovation & Resilience in Aerospace Manufacturing
Transcript
- speaker-1: Welcome to the Decision Advantage, a fusion intelligence podcast by Fernand Consulting. I'm Brian Leclerc, and today I will be speaking with Randy McKee, the executive director of the New Hampshire Aerospace and Defense Consortium. Randy, welcome to the show. speaker-0: Thank you, Brian. Appreciate you having me. speaker-1: So, Randy, you you've dedicated your career to manufacturing. Could you share a bit about your background, what continues to drive your passion for for the industry and why Natick plays such a vital role in regional manufacturers? speaker-0: Sure. So bit of manufacturing in the state of New Hampshire. I moved up here in two thousand two. ⁓ and the thing that ⁓ absolutely to this day gets me up in the morning and and gets me excited, I am a manufacturing nerd. I love the fact that you start with nothing and end up with some of the most exceptional things that have ever existed in the history of humanity. You know, if it's in the metal business, you literally wake up ⁓ or you start the process with a rock. Right. And then you end up with some sort of aerospace or space component, something in defense. It's amazing. Or if it's on the plastic side, you start with goop or resin or anything along those lines. It and yet something incredible comes out. Carbon fiber, you know, you look at the it's a it's a roll of cloth and some goop. Next thing you know, you've got the most sophisticated stuff in the world. I absolutely love that. I love seeing things materialize. ⁓ and the number of people that it takes to make those things is stunning. You know, you have to have someone conceptualize it, then you have to have someone be able to draw it, then you have to have somebody ⁓ able to program it, then you have to have somebody you can actually make the damn thing. ⁓ and then nothing in aerospace or defense matters unless you can measure it. So there's a whole other discipline there. And then finally, you know, the the thing is manufactured and gets shipped and goes to wherever it's going. And it's just one tiny component ⁓ in the much larger picture. And to me, that is incredible. The amount of people it takes to make something fly. ⁓ in any manner which it does fly is stunning. And that much coordination between human beings that come from all different backgrounds, all different walks of life, and yet they have one common goal. I absolutely am in love with it from the very, very beginning to the very, very last stages of the process. ⁓ when I was running factory up in ⁓ Meredith, I was the last one out the door almost every night. You know, I was mopping the floors. I was doing helping with design work, helping with machining strategy. Sometimes people there. Yeah. Us machining the parts. Like I I just absolutely love it. And I have such respect for the people that do it. Wake up every day and go to work and you deal with all kinds of insanity while you're there. ⁓ but you get back up the next day and you go back to it because the reward I think outweighs all of the other nuttiness that that comes to the territory. So that's my passion for manufacturing as far as for NADEC. speaker-1: We still speaker-0: I say this in my meetings all the time. These people they're my superheroes. We have the best, and I truly mean it from the bottom of my heart, the best manufacturers throughout New Hampshire and throughout the Northeast. They take their jobs ⁓ incredibly seriously. People's lives are at stake ⁓ with what they produce, and they know that. And there's such pride in the craftsmanship and it's both artistry and it's also engineering at the same time. And it's just it's absolutely amazing. And What they accomplished that allows our warfighter to perform out on the world stage is stunning. And it just drives me. And I'm just so proud to be able to re represent that many ⁓ manufacturers, all these different disciplines, all these different endeavors that they're involved in. It's it's incredible for me. So I I I absolutely love it. I'm so proud ⁓ to be a part of the organization and especially to have relationships with that all the members. It truly is a prideful experience. speaker-1: Yeah, it is it's amazing what what's being created ⁓ just on a daily basis. We we want to talk how predictive analytics is transforming how ⁓ modern ⁓ manufacturers operate. So from like your perspective, ⁓ how are your members and your companies adapting those new tools and and where are you seeing the biggest operational benefits from that? speaker-0: So the beautiful thing about predictive analytics is the accuracy that it's getting closer and closer and closer to. ⁓ first and foremost, ⁓ first at as far as I know, appeared in the maintenance realm. Using predictive analytics to know when your machine or your equipment was going to go down. ⁓ being able to act in advance with that because that is an absolute death knell when that happens. And to be able to ⁓ predict that the one is coming, that's huge. As The science continued to grow and with the power of computing and everything else that went into it, you start getting into the predictive analytics that Fernand uses, which is absolutely brilliant. And by the way, I should make this clear to anybody who's listening. We have one consulting company in our midst at NADEC, like Ferndon. That is not because we don't have them beating down our doors all the time, because this is the only company that we trust ⁓ and that we put our faith into. And and Don Hersey is absolutely amazing. But what she has done. She's she's incredible. And what she's brought to me long before I even really knew her, she was just somebody that I think we invited to show up to one of our meetings really to feel her out more so than ⁓ we we told her it was so she could see who we were. But really it was the opposite. It was it was an interview process. You do you absolutely have to, especially in with consultants in the manufacturing world, there's a lot of people that shouldn't be doing it. speaker-1: You gotta do that, right? speaker-0: ⁓ a lot of ⁓ just washed out and were never any good at anything, so they hung a shingle and claimed to be a consultant. That is not Ferndin, that and that's definitely not Darn. speaker-1: Easy to call yourself consultant, but yeah. speaker-0: Yes, it really is, right? Who's gonna j who's gonna check it? Right. or have any idea how you did on your last gig. But she brought stuff to my attention and and just called it flat out. This is going to happen. And it did. And she's been spot on across the board with just about everything she's presented. All of her newsletters are spot on. The way she approaches the market is spot on. So I knew that she was the right pick for the consultant within the the NADEC world. And that's why she's here. And so Yeah, I don't know to the extent ⁓ how much or how ubiquitous the use of Ferndon is within our membership, but it should be. Everybody should be paying paying very close attention to what Ferndon is putting out there because it's always right. So that's that's not here hyperbole, by the way. Sometimes it's it's a little off on the timing, but overall it's on the beam. So speaker-1: Yeah, and that's that's what we're trying to get across with a that analytics sort of look at things. So speaker-0: It it's a hard pitch because the people that you're trying to get it across to, they're putting off fires all day long. Reactive, reactive, reactive, reactive, reactive. And that's not what this is. This is a long term proactive approach to what's coming. ⁓ but I I know, you know, from personal experience and I know I speak on behalf of pretty much everybody in the organization, company wise, you're just dealing with so many emergencies all the time. I mean It gets to the point where you become numb to it and you really do need something like Fernandin out in front of you. ⁓ so speaker-1: So those emergencies don't happen quite as often, right? Right. Yeah. speaker-0: Right. Yeah. So that would be my plea to my membership. Pay attention to what what Verdon's doing out there. Wrong. speaker-1: Yeah, no that sounds great. ⁓ well, ⁓ we also want to talk about ⁓ so you you recently returned from the Farnborough ⁓ air show in England. Yeah. so what were some of your your the biggest takeaways and and the highlights of the events and you know, so how how does the the global aerospace scene kind of compare to what's happening here in New England or you know, in the United States in general? speaker-0: So first of all, you should know that New England represents roughly eighteen percent of all the aerospace manufacturing ⁓ in the entire DOW. It's amazing. And when you pull in the entire Northeast, so you include PA in New York, ⁓ you've got almost forty percent of the industrial base, ⁓ by less than thirty percent of the population. So pretty amazing stuff. But ⁓ in particular in the New Hampshire booth, ⁓ first of all, I have to give tremendous thanks to Senator Shaheen. speaker-1: Just smile. speaker-0: ⁓ to start out the show, we had the Under Secretary of War, Michael Duffy. We had the ⁓ assistant administrator, deputy administrator for NASA, Matt Anderson, we had the PEO of the F 35 program, General Massiello, and we had the ambassador from the United States to the UK, Warren Stevens, come to our booth. ⁓ what was really cool about that was what was in our booth. So ⁓ General Massiello walked right up to a company called Adare, ⁓ great NADEC member. Over on the, I call it the west coast of New Hampshire. ⁓ and they build ⁓ a unit that checks the fasteners on the F 35. ⁓ it's not just for the F 35, it's for anything that flies. ⁓ General Massiello was incredibly familiar with the technology. ⁓ they got to have a one on one conversation about how they could use it more in the world ⁓ what it means for the F thirty five program that Adare invented this thing. And as you went down the line in the New Hampshire booth, almost, well not almost, every single company that was represented there had something that was unique, that was powerful, and that was respected on the world stage. And that was really cool to see. It was really cool to see alive. So other companies that there was Creare, which is the parent corporation of Bidare, more brilliant engineers over on the West Coast, a company called Bond Optics, which makes optics, which is in everything that flies, you know, satellites. You name it, it's it's in there. Umsive supply chain through SVT. ⁓ we had Rogue Space Systems who's developing all kinds of unique systems for space, whether it's manufacturing or warehousing or all kinds of what we consider more practical Earth applications are actually figuring out how to get that done up in space. So they're a big space logistics company. And then we had ⁓ ePropelled. They made components for drones and they were definitely one of the bells of the ball. considering what's going on in the world and all the things that we've learned from other places in the world, how much ⁓ the drone game has really picked up in warfare and the swarming and the rest of it. So that was incredible to have them. UNH was there. UNH, most people don't know this, but they have one of the most sophisticated research facilities in the country. They've been doing it since nineteen fifty two for space. Wow. They have about thirty million dollars worth of equipment under one roof. for their research group. And they are far and away one of the biggest leading institutes in the country for space research. They've just ⁓ kept it very quiet. So it's nice to see them out on the stage ⁓ and and able to you speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. speaker-0: It's unbelievable what comes out of the state. You know, and that's that's seven entities ⁓ for a manufacturing consortium that has 148 members. You know, that's all we had room for. And I thank the state of New Hampshire for making that happen. I mean, they got us they got us all on the booth together, but it was just it was it was incredible to watch. It was incredible to watch how much interest and and we just had nonstop flow into our booth the entire week that we were there. So it was really, really cool. We then went up to central north central England, ⁓ to an area called Yorkshire, which is almost identical to New Hampshire. Right? It really is. I mean, not first of all, all of our cities carry the same names, but ⁓ all the same problems with the workforce, all the same problems with supply chain, all the same problems with everything. ⁓ and it was great to get up there and talk to them. There are all kinds of ⁓ agreements that were made between speaker-1: Like speaker-0: the state of New Hampshire and the Yorkshire area and the University of Leeds and the University of New Hampshire and the Yorkshire Space Hub and the Space Tech Hub at UNH. ⁓ it w it was fascinating to get up there and to see it live and to be able to talk to people there dealing with the same stuff. ⁓ I mean it was also fascinating to see just how far more advanced we are in the US ⁓ than the UK. That was also surprising. We are no doubt about it. You walk around on an air show United States of America. It's just heads and shoulders ab above the rest of the world, even though they probably won't like hearing that when they listen to the podcast. But facts are facts. It's absolutely ⁓ far and away leading the way. And it it it it is a prideful moment when you when you walk around and it's you see what the United States has on display. And the best in the world bring their best. And it's truly incredible, but it still doesn't hold a candle to what we do in the United States. So it's pretty cool. speaker-1: So I guess you you see the future of the sector here as very positive then. speaker-0: Absolutely. There's no question that I think twenty twenty seven will be one of the best ⁓ years in the aerospace industry that it's ever seen. I think we are absolutely in the golden age of aerospace right now. ⁓ between space and aerospace and and all the technology as it changes and and figure out ways to get things more efficiently and get ⁓ to move faster. I don't think there's any doubt that aerospace and space is where you want to be right now. And I I truly believe these are the golden years. I think we'll look back on this and say, wow, that was amazing. We were just in that next technological leap across almost all sectors of of aerospace and space. And it's a great time to be a part of it. speaker-1: Yeah, I I can see why you ⁓ continue to have the passion then. It's speaker-0: It is so cool. And by the way, at the end of every day, three o'clock at the Farmborough Air Show, walk outside and watch F thirty five stone. Yeah, it doesn't make for a bad end of a day. It never gets old. It's really cool. speaker-1: Yeah. Right, exactly. Right. Right. Yeah. So just bringing it back to here a little bit. So ⁓ you know, I I'm sure you've you've dealt with this because it's it's all over the news about supply chain disruptions and just how it's been a headache for for almost every sector, but it must really impact you and 'cause I mean you're trying to get metals that might be hard to get or or other supply things. So like I mean How are you how's your group like navigating this and and you know, are there opportunities to build like resilience here in New Hampshire and in this sternal area? speaker-0: So there are. There's actually ⁓ amazingly, again, things that you wouldn't know unless you listen to this podcast or Brian if you weren't asking these questions. ⁓ down in Swansea, New Hampshire, down in the southwest corner, there's a company ⁓ called Soldier Systems that is recovering germanium from discarded US military equipment. Because the entire time we were building up with this technology in the eighties and nineties and early two thousands, germanium was Easily we it was easy to come by. So we put it on everything. And we still do. It still goes on everything. It's absolutely necessary for military equipment. But then the United States would just put this stuff in depots, ⁓ just discard it in depots. These guys figured out a way to pull the germanium off of the lenses. and they do it in a hundred percent environmentally friendly way and then remelt it, turn it back into ingots and put it back in the supply chain. ⁓ wow. That's that's pretty incredible. In Swansea, New Hampshire. ⁓ absolutely amazing. Yeah. Bl blows your mind when you see it. And absolute two very brilliant men leading the charge on that one. Then over in Exeter, another company called Phoenix Tailings, they're figuring out ways to take aggregate and purify the ⁓ critical minerals out of the aggregate. And so Of all places in the world, you wouldn't think Exeter, New Hampshire would have operation like that, right? ⁓ but again, it's a hundred percent environmentally friendly. You would have no idea when you drove by and you wouldn't have a clue of what's going on inside there. But you go inside and there's pallets and pallets and pallets of rocks and dirt. And what comes out the other side are critical minerals. So it's it's pretty amazing. ⁓ and now there's rumors up north that New Hampshire might be home to some large veins of lithium. Mm-hmm. Wouldn't that be something? So ⁓ speaker-1: And is that something that'll be able to be extracted in a speaker-0: According to my sources, the answer to that is yes. I But that was of course my first question too. It was like okay, if it's up there, how do we get it? Yeah. speaker-1: That's been the problem in a lot of places in the United States, right? Yeah. speaker-0: So it there's more, as always, in the state of New Hampshire, there's more than meets the eye. Yeah. Well that's the idea behind it. Right? Yes. But that's the idea behind the trade consortium is to get everybody talking. ⁓ because, you know, individually, companies can accomplish anything, but collectively we're unstoppable. And that's that's our message to the world. ⁓ when you come here, we are connected. We're connected through government, we're connected through education, we're connected to each other. And Doing business here is is easy. It really is easy and it's fast and it's efficient and it's smart. So you take all the best attributes of our state and then you get people to open up and and start talking, you know, blow down those silos, start interacting with each other and there's nothing that can stop us. Nothing. So speaker-1: It's the right attitude, right? speaker-0: Yeah. Absolutely it is. You know? speaker-1: Yeah. So and and ⁓ you know, we we've seen that ⁓ the the Natick website highlights a ⁓ a new initiative called Prime Ready. can you walk us through what what Prime Ready is and how that's like empowering your group? speaker-0: NASA ⁓ came to NADEC and said, Okay, we have a problem. ⁓ we know we have a problem. We're using the old boys network way too much. We're using, you know, the existing suppliers that we've always used. We've used them for thirty, forty years, and they're not really even the same company anymore. You know, ownership has changed or passed on and passed it to their kids who don't really know what they're doing. So we're kind of stuck. So we've got long lead times. We've got really we're paying way too much for stuff. We need more suppliers into our database. That's the NASA side. Primes, somewhat in the same boat. They're little a little bit better, but at the same time, they're going back into the same companies they always go to. They've got their supply chain set up. Costs are up, lead times are up. They also want to put people in. So that's the demand side. On the supply side, and this is from personal experience as much as anything else, as as well as interviewing, you know, over I think there's a hundred and twenty five companies in the pilot program. Over and over and over again, you are asked to submit your capabilities to whatever entity it is, whether it's the Navy, whether it's the Army, whether it's NASA, doesn't matter. You're asked to send your capabilities. The primes, whether it's you know the and by the way, these guys are dear friends and huge supporters of NADEC, but whether it's BAE, Boeing, Raytheon, RTX are known now, Collins, it's it's the same process over and over and over again. And From the supply side, it's very frustrating because oftentimes you'll submit your credentials and you'll never hear anything back. It pretty much goes into a black hole. And you don't know why no one's responding to you. You know, are there seventeen thousand companies just like yours? And so you didn't get picked out of the pile. When NASA tasked th this to NADEC, knowing what it feels like to be a supplier, you know that you no one ever knows your true capacity, no one ever knows your true capabilities, no one really knows all of your compliance. And so we We go out and on site, we actually go on site and take down every last piece of equipment inside your facility, all the way down to pin sets and micrometers. And then we take that information, we load it into our system. The other thing we do when we take down that information is we get the make model and data manufacture of any equipment that you have. We then go get the owner's manuals for that equipment. What that allows us to do is And this is through the use of AI. This is where AI comes into it. All the rest is a hundred percent humid, vetted, verified. We don't trust AI at all. We don't trust the internet at all. That's absolutely true. This is a closed loop system. But where we use AI is we translate from the owner's manuals back to model based definition or CAD files so that when you're on the supply side, all you have to do is drop the model into the system and then it will tell you who has the capability of making that. Even if they don't market themselves that way. So oftentimes for for NASA, they need things made and companies might have all the capability to make it, but they've always thought of themselves as a medical device manufacturer or as something else in industry. And they never really thought of themselves as I can make fuel filters for a rocket. Well, you can. You've got the equipment to do it. Now all you have to do is is program the equipment to to run the procedure to make the part. So For the first time ever on the supply side, you get truly seen for who you are and you get scored against the requirements of all those big primes and all those big government agencies, and you only have to do it once. Then that information is in there. The system updates on a daily basis. So if there's any changes, once it's human, vetted, and verified, it goes into your profile. Back on the supply side, I don't need to hire highly qualified or skilled people to find things that I need. They just simply have to draw the model. into the system. If they can't drop the model in, they can just describe it in natural language and boom, it pulls up the people that are qualified and scores them against the requirements of the supply side entity, whether it's a prime or government agency. And so that's that's the prime ready system at its core. It does a lot more than that, but then that's the easiest way to explain it. speaker-1: Yeah, just just that basics it sounds incredibly powerful and and and use. speaker-0: It is. It is. And it doesn't touch the internet so it can't get corrupted. And that's I think one of its biggest attributes. It's on the data collection side where the the true magic happens because we physically go out and collect it. ⁓ and then what the AI can do, that's what it can do today. Six months from now I'm sure it'll be ten times better what it can speaker-1: That sounds like a massive project. Gather all that data. So speaker-0: It is a massive project. It is. But you know, that's what really matters. At the end of the day, all the rest of the stuff is is great. And it's all gonna continue to change and get better. But it doesn't mean anything if you don't get the truth. speaker-1: Aaron If you were somehow given like the power of the executive, you know, you you became the president of the United States for a day, and your mandate was to like strengthen the defense industrial base, you know, w what are a couple of s systematic changes that you'd you'd really like to you know put speaker-0: The very first very first thing I would attack is middle management bureaucracy in all of our branches of military and all of our government agencies. People who knew how to effectively climb what is the corporate ladder inside of government, but actually don't have any experience in the field or the discipline to which they've been given responsibility to. I think we need to have experts in those positions, not people that were really good at just moving up the ladder because ⁓ the Space Force has a term for this. They call it the frozen middle. Absolutely one hundred percent concur. It's a brilliant characterization of what happens. And I think so much progress gets stopped because you've got people at the very top who know exactly what's needed and exactly what they want. And you've got the people that can actually produce that. And then in the middle you've got these people who have pretty much no idea what they're doing. speaker-1: Yeah. ⁓ speaker-0: They do. They they absolutely create a robot. They get frozen. And that's why they call it the frozen middle. They they're they're f absolutely frozen because they don't know the answer either way. And they were put in those positions, which is unfortunate because they're they're great people. They have the best of intentions. They just don't have the technical prowess to to make the connection between both ends of that spectrum. So that would be the first thing I would do. I would chase that down and say you have to be qualified in the discipline in which you are acting as ⁓ a representative of any of the branches of the military or any government agency. That would be that would be the very first thing I chase. And then the the second thing I would chase is I would do my very, very best, and I would put it out, I guess, as a mandate since I get to be, you know, president for a day. Right? I I would put it out as a ⁓ as a mandate that guidance counselors in public high schools be retrained on how they think speaker-1: That seems pretty logical. speaker-0: about their job performance, not based on how many four year colleges they send their students to, but rather on the efficacy of those students two years, four years, six years out of high school. I think that that would do a tremendous job shoring up ⁓ this massive workforce shortage that we have. And I think that that s really starts with with guidance counselors. Guidance counselors, high school principals and parents really need to understand that just because you don't go to a four-year college, ⁓ it doesn't mean that you are going to be short at anything in life. And right now, if anything, you're gonna do far, far better than your peers. And I think that that is a really, really important thing. It's not to take anything away from college. Obviously, I am a result of that system. It is absolutely phenomenal. But at the same time, our needs have changed in the country. Our needs, you know, when I was there are totally different than what they are now. And we need the best and the brightest. that we have in our country in the manufacturing sector in support of the warfighter. speaker-1: Plenty of opportunities out there, right? speaker-0: huge and it needs to be presented to the best of the best so that they see what it is and see how it feels and and and see what it's like to actually produce something of tremendous value and I guarantee that passion will flame up inside of it. speaker-1: They need to talk to you is what they need to do. speaker-0: My door's always open. speaker-1: To talk about that passion. ⁓ all right. Well this has been great. I mean, is is there any, you know, final message or piece of advice you want to ⁓ to give to the audience before we wrap up? speaker-0: Yeah, well first, thank you for listening. I'm sure you could have found a better thing to do with a half an hour of your life than to listen to me drove on. But so thank you for for listening. And and two, if you haven't found or been a part of NADEC, I gotta make the pitch. Come join us. Come see what we're all about. Give me a call, send me an email, whatever. Always here for that. And then please pay attention when you see the the our organization backferndon. And pay attention when Don sends out those those West emails. They they are phenomenal, full of really, really good stuff. speaker-1: That's awesome. All right. Well, Reddy, thank you for bringing your manufacturing perspective to the chat today. speaker-0: Thanks for appreciating that. speaker-1: Right. Thank you. And thank you for tuning in to the Decision Advantage.