Inaugural AeroDef Expo Draws Local Manufacturers

When a company is selling parts to the Department of Defense, Scott Wolfson wants to know about it. That’s because Wolfson can sell that company laser equipment to make the required identification numbers, or he can do the marking himself at his Reseda-based business, All-Marks. Every part purchased by the Pentagon needs to have a code identifying the supplier, a part number and serial number. “They then can track the part over the life of the product,” Wolfson said, standing at the All-Marks booth on the exhibit floor at the Anaheim Convention Center. Wolfson and All-Marks were one of more than 100 companies taking part in the inaugural AeroDef Expo and Conference put on by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers. With the SME limiting its Westec manufacturing expo to every other year, AeroDef is the group’s main West Coast show for 2011. It drew together about 8,000 registered attendees as well as prime contractors and suppliers for military and commercial aircraft and other defense-related projects. About a dozen businesses came from the greater Valley region. Sean Scanlon was representing Supra Alloys Inc., a Camarillo metals supplier to the aerospace, medical device and commercial/industrial markets. A good sign that manufacturers are producing again is when metal sales are up. Titanium is a preferred metal in aircraft applications because it is non-corrosive and lightweight. “Medical has always been good and aerospace is starting to pick up again,” Scanlon said. Tony Cortez was attending his first SME show to drum up business for his Camarillo shop, C&S Precision Machining. He already does mostly aerospace work and came to AeroDef to make contacts that may bring in additional work after having experienced lean years during the recession. “I’m trying to find ways to bring the business back to life,” Cortez said, standing at his modest exhibit, which included samples of the parts his company makes on its 10 CNC (computer numerical control) machines. CNC machines are also part of what Alan Gottlieb does, except he is selling them rather than operating one. Machinery Resources International Inc. in Woodland Hills values and resells manufacturing equipment, often getting it into the hands of the buyer sooner than if purchased new. Customers range from the prime contractors down to medium and small job shops. With the recession having taken its toll on some companies, there was never a lack of equipment for Gottlieb and his crew to sell. “We are one of the bigger companies in this industry but still they are all very small,” Gottlieb said. Aerospace is about 10 percent of the business done by Comco Inc., a family-owned manufacturer of micro-abrasion blasting equipment based in Burbank, which is why the company exhibited at the conference. Comco equipment cleans, deburrs and textures small parts or small sections of larger parts using a wide variety of abrasives. Foot traffic in the exhibit hall was slow on the morning of the first day but that could be expected as it was the first time AeroDef had taken place, said Pat Byrne, the company’s sales and marketing manager. “I hope they build up momentum to be able to be in all five halls,” Byrne added. Big Transition Aerospace is an industry in transition – in the materials used in aircrafts, in the manufacturing process, in how the supply chain works. Getting through that transition will require new technology, innovation and a global perspective. An aircraft assembled in the U.S. can no longer rely solely on domestic suppliers. These new methods and processes must be applied to overcome the industry’s habit of long development cycles. There needs to be a quicker way of going from a prototype to a full production aircraft without having to do engineering over and rebuild the supply chain, said Mike Vander Wel, manufacturing domain leader, enterprise technology strategy office with The Boeing Co. “There is a lot of value lost there because we are not efficient,” Vander Wel said during a panel discussion about manufacturing and innovation. To see what the future holds for aerospace manufacturing, one need only to look at Northrop Grumman’s aerospace facility in Palmdale where a new integrated production line went active last month to make the center fuselage for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. While final assembly is done by Lockheed Martin in Texas, the F-35 is truly an international aircraft. Manufacturers from the U.S. and nine other countries provided components for the first plane to take a test flight. Northrop Grumman has a company in Turkey as its second source for the center fuselage. Upgrades have also been done in Ft. Worth, where the F-16 and F-22 have been assembled. Lessons learned from those aircraft were put into the manufacturing process for the F-35 in addition to using the latest technology, such as giving workers access to the digital design database right on the factory floor, said Tom Burbage, executive vice president and general manager of the Joint Strike Fighter program. Robots moving on gantries do 80 percent of the drilling on the plane. The remainder is still done manually because there are still some movements robots don’t have the dexterity to perform. The manual drilling however is the highest source requiring repairs. “The robots on the gantry never have a bad day,” Burbage said. Less labor intensive manufacturing methods are not the only way for aircraft makers to reduce costs. The use of composite materials – a mixture of different metals and alloys – costs less and the reason why the days of 90 percent metal planes are a thing of the past. The F-35 is made of 40 percent composite materials, as compared to 20 percent for the F-22 and a mere 2 percent for the F-16, according to Burbage. Getting those materials, however, may prove challenging as the best suppliers of metals are likely unqualified to do the same for composites. The innovation in new aircraft materials will come from smaller companies – until they get snatched up by the larger suppliers wanting to build up their capabilities. For consolidation is another mark of this industry in transition. “It is going to be a big change because of mass production,” Vander Wel said of composite materials. “It will put a strain on the supply chain when it comes to procurement.” Staff Reporter Mark Madler can be reached at (818) 316-3126 or by e-mail at [email protected] He wrote this column on the other side of a partition from a noisy metal-cutting machine.