The Defense Industrial Supply Chain Summit is Oct. 29-30 in Charlotte. If your company is in the aerospace, maritime, armaments or ground vehicle supply chain – or you want to be – this is a good event to attend.
It is being put on by the North Carolina Military Business Center and its DefenseTechnology Transition Office. The main events are happening all-day on Wednesday, Oct. 30. The afternoon before, on Tuesday, Oct. 29, there will be a tour of GM Defense and Hendrick Motorsports in Concord, about a mile from the Charlotte Motor Speedway, so that’s pretty good. Wednesday’s events – speeches, panel discussions, a trade show – will be at the Harris Conference Center, on Central Piedmont Community College’s Harris Campus near the airport.
This particular conference is a new thing for the Military Business Center. The NCMBC held an annual aerospace summit starting in 2010. The last one in person was in 2019, before the pandemic. In 2021, a virtual summit was held online. After that, said Scott Dorney (right), the NCMBC executive director, “We decided we really wanted to modify it.”
“Every time we did an aerospace summit – which was about the supply chain for aerospace, which is what we have in North Carolina – we’d contact businesses to come, and they’d say, well, we only do maritime, we don’t do aerospace. Or we only work ground vehicles and automotive, we don’t do aerospace.
“What we realized over the years,” said Dorney, “is that the supply chain for these industries is very siloed. So we decided that instead of an aerospace summit, we wanted to do a supply chain summit that focused on four industries – aerospace, maritime, ground vehicles and armaments – so that we can try to break down some of these siloes, and increase the viability and density of the supply chain for our federal agencies across these industries.”
Speakers
The event is expected to draw prime contractors, original equipment manufacturers, subprimes and representatives from the Defense Logistics Agency and Army Futures Command.
Speakers will include Robert W. Watts, deputy director, Contested Logistics Cross-Functional Team, US Army Futures Command, Donald Schulze, deputy director, DLA Land Supplier Operations, Defense Logistics Agency, Land and Maritime and Scott Sendmeyer, Acting Director for Policy, Analysis and Transition, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Industrial Base Policy
We don’t make aircraft carriers in North Carolina like they do up in Newport News, Virginia, and we don’t assemble F-35 fighters like Lockheed Martin does in Fort Worth, Texas. But our manufacturing base supplies a lot of parts and components used in major military systems.
North Carolina has around 600 machine shops, with nearly 6,500 employees. Around 50 companies that manufacture parts for the aerospace industry and employ more than 6,100 employees. Another 1,600 companies that fabricate metal products, and employ more than 38,000 employees. And around 450 companies that manufacture transportation equipment and employ more than 35,500 workers. More than 70 companies that work on ships and boats, and employ 2,600.
Some of the above are primes, winning contracts from the military, but most of them are part of some large prime contractor’s supply chain.
The challenge is the silo effect that Dorney describes.
“We have a lot of machining companies that make components for weapons, small arms, that sort of thing. We want to make sure they know about opportunities in the other sectors.”
But silos exist everywhere in the defense industrial base.
“I’ll use Boeing as an example. You can be on the supply chain for the CH-47 Chinook and have no idea how to get into the supply chain for the Apache helicopter or the 787 Dreamliner, for that matter,” said Dorney.
“That’s what we’re trying to do, is inform people about opportunities across supply chains, not only with the government but with their primes and with their MRO operations.”
One of the barriers that companies face in getting their products into new supply chains is time.
“If you’re busy making machine parts for FN Corporation for a machine gun, how much time do you have to think, ‘You know, I wonder if I could make parts for the F-35 strike fighter?’ And a lot of people self-select no. ‘Oh, they must have all the supply chain they need.’”
But the reality is that in many sectors, for many components, that isn’t true.
“If you talk to DLA Aviation, if you talk to DLA Troop Support, their number one concern is the viability of the defense industrial base, and the supply chain for their systems. They’ll tell you that their supply chain in many cases is one deep. They have one prime. That’s it. And that one prime has only one supplier of a certain component.
Dorney knows that the Military Business Center is taking on some risk by holding a different sort of supply chain conference, across industries.
“If we were just doing a supply chain for small arms corporations, we’d have FN Corp., we’d have Sig Sauer, we’d have Remington. We would find all the machine shops and bring them to one event. We’re saying we want to talk about opportunities in aerospace, ground vehicles, etc. We want you to get out of your comfort zone of just doing small arms stuff and look at opportunities over here.
The conference will have sessions with the sustainment folks at DLA – the folks who have to supply the warfighters in the field – on opportunities for companies. But it will also have the look-ahead from AFC on new requirements and capabilities ahead.
And there will be workforce discussions. “Always the number one concern of our businesses is where am I going to get my workforce?” So there will be two workforce sessions, one around aerospace and one more generally around industrial workforce needs, focused on electronics and machining.
“We understand it’s a first-time event, and it takes a little bit of time to build momentum,” said Dorney. He recalled the first FEDTEX event that the NCMBC held in 2019, the federal textile summit, drew between 150 and 200 attendees. “And we had to convince clothing and textile at DLA that it was worth their time to come on down. This year, we went over 400.”
Panels will include:
Department of Defense Small Business Programs, Support and Outreach:
- Lee Moritz, Regional Business Development Professional (Hickory), North Carolina Military Business Center
- John Henley, Associate Director, Small Business Programs, Defense Logistics Agency, Aviation
- Kreston Harris, Director, DLA Land and Maritime Office of Small Business Programs, Defense Logistics Agency, Land & Maritime
- Chris Rabassi, Small Business Programs, Office of Small Business Programs, Marine Corps Installations East
- Terressa Bebout, Technical Director of Small Business Strategy, Office of Small Business Programs, Naval Air Systems Command
- Dawn Chartier, Director, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Lakehurst Office of Small Business Programs
Sustaining Supply Chain for Ground Vehicles / Maritime Systems (Agency)
- Rick Gilmore, Regional Business Development Professional (Triad), North Carolina Military Business Center
- CAPT Dale Haney, Director, DLA Maritime Supplier Operations, Defense Logistics Agency, Land and Maritime
- Donald Schulze, Deputy Director, DLA Land Supplier Operations, Defense Logistics Agency, Land and Maritime
Sustaining Supply Chain for Ground Vehicles & Maritime Systems (Industry)
- Rick Gilmore, Regional Business Development Professional (Triad), North Carolina Military Business Center
- Michael Brown, Vice President of Outside Services, Richard Childress Racing
- Steve Murphy, VP Of Contracts & Global Supply Chain, GM Defense
- Lindsey Crisp, President & CEO, Carver Machine Works
- KeAnne Hoeg, Director, Data Management Systems, Supplier Matching & Reporting, North Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NCMEP), North Carolina State University
Sustaining Supply Chain for Aerospace and Armaments Systems (Industry)
- Joe Tew, Regional Business Development Professional (Western Carolina), North Carolina Military Business Center
- KeAnne Hoeg, Director, Data Management Systems, Supplier Matching & Reporting, North Carolina Manufacturing Extension Partnership (NCMEP), North Carolina State University
- Tony Nelson, Computational Scientist, Corvid Technologies
Sustaining Supply Chain for Aerospace & Armaments Systems (Agency)
- Joe Tew, Regional Business Development Professional (Western Carolina), North Carolina Military Business Center
- Kelly Watts, Director Supplier Operations, Defense Logistics Agency, Aviation
- Donald Schulze, Deputy Director, DLA Land Supplier Operations, Defense Logistics Agency, Land and Maritime
- Terressa Bebout, Technical Director of Small Business Strategy, Office of Small Business Programs, Naval Air Systems Command
- Dawn Chartier, Director, Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division, Lakehurst Office of Small Business Programs
Defense Logistics Agency Operations and Acquisition Processes
- Joe Tew, Regional Business Development Professional (Western Carolina), North Carolina Military Business Center
- Matthew Woods, Senior Business Process Analysts / Automated KO, Defense Logistics Agency, Aviation
- John Dotchin, Procurement Process Support Directorate, Defense Logistics Agency, Land & Maritime
- Christina Geobert, Branch Chief – Automated One Time Buy Team, Procurement Process Support Directorate, Defense Logistics Agency – Land & Maritime
Empowering the Future: Strengthening the DoD Aerospace Workforce
- Erin Ananian-Gentile, Regional Business Development Professional (New Bern), North Carolina Military Business Center
- Dr. Charlene Stokes, Manufacturing Technology Program Office, Program Manager Manufacturing Education and Workforce Development, Office of the Secretary of Defense
- Nick Yale, Director, Aviation Programs, Guilford Technical Community College
- David Mayers, Director of Aviation, Guilford County Schools
- Dawn Katz, Dean of Workforce Development, Lenoir Community College
- Jim Catteau, Site Operations Manager, TCOM
Fortifying the Future: Enhancing the DoD Industrial Workforce
- Erin Ananian-Gentile, Regional Business Development Professional (New Bern), North Carolina Military Business Center
- Dr. Charlene Stokes, Manufacturing Technology Program Office, Program Manager Manufacturing Education and Workforce Development, Office of the Secretary of Defense
- Ricky Meadows, Dean of Career & Technical Programs, Craven Community College
- Megan Johnson, Workforce Development Coordinator II, Craven Community College
- Brandi Bragg, Workforce Connector, Northeast NC Career Pathways
Cybersecurity Compliance Panel – Securing Your Business in the Defense Supply Chain
- Laura Rodgers, Director of Cybersecurity Practice, North Carolina State University
- Lori Jackson, President, White Raven Security
- Matt Kline, Director of Compliance, Corvid Cyberdefense
- Lawrence Cruciana, President, Corporate Information Technologies
Why present Your Technology or Innovation to Federal Agencies
- TJ Gilroy, Program Manager, North Carolina Defense Technology Transition (DEFTECH) Office
Case Studies: Presenting Your Company and Technologies to Federal Agencies
Selected businesses will each have five minutes to pitch their innovative technology solutions, followed by questions and feedback from government representatives
