aerospace
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Tony Thene and the value of getting the metal right
An accountant’s route through the metals business took Tony Thene from an Indiana plant to Carpenter Technology’s chief executive chair. His career turns on a practical question: how do you make specialist knowledge worth more to a customer?
ATI makes the metal that takes the heat.
A jet engine is a demanding customer. ATI built its business around that fact, trading ordinary stainless steel for alloys and components that earn their keep under pressure.
Quaker Houghton makes the small things pay
A factory can lose money one coolant tank at a time. Quaker Houghton has built a business around finding the losses hiding in the fluid.
Steve Sliwa and the trouble with a perfectly good rock
Before he co-founded Seeq, Steve Sliwa learned to outwait NASA bureaucracy, led an aviation university, and helped grow a drone company. His career keeps returning to a practical question: what lets capable people get on with the work?
Kaiser Aluminum. The value is in the details.
A jet, a beverage can, a precision tube. Kaiser Aluminum makes the metal behind all three. Its $670 million return to packaging reveals what customers are really buying: consistency.
Lockheed Martin sells the long game
A fighter jet is the beginning of the relationship. The harder business is keeping an entire system ready, year after year.
Boeing’s future is built one bolt at a time.
Boeing can design an airplane that crosses an ocean. Its harder assignment is making sure every ordinary step on the factory floor happens exactly as it should.
RTX and the price of staying airborne
A tiny flaw in engine metal exposed the enormous promise behind RTX: selling a machine means standing behind it for years. Its aircraft systems and missile defenses run on the same demanding bargain.
Novelis wants the aluminum back.
The company behind the metal in cans, cars and aircraft has built a business around the return trip. Its $5 billion Alabama bet shows how expensive closing the loop can be.
PPG sells paint. The payoff is time.
A coating is a thin layer with a long job description. PPG’s bet is that better chemistry, paired with better tools, can save customers far more than the price of the paint.
Textron built an empire. Now comes the edit.
The company behind Cessna jets, Bell rotorcraft, and E-Z-GO golf cars grew by putting unlikely businesses together. Its next move is to pull some of them apart.
Teledyne makes the invisible useful
From the James Webb Space Telescope to a yellow robot beneath the waves, Teledyne sells a particular kind of advantage: knowing what the human eye cannot tell you.
Honeywell Aerospace and the price of a missing part
Its systems help aircraft fly, navigate and stay out of trouble. Now the newly independent supplier must solve a problem closer to the ground: getting every last part out the door.
Rockwell Collins made the cockpit make sense.
A radio maker from Iowa learned to put complicated machines in conversation. Its enduring lesson is about what to connect - and where to stop.
Northrop Grumman and the price of getting it right
A telescope that unfolds in space. A bomber built to slip past radar. Northrop Grumman sells machines whose smallest details can decide whether the whole thing works.
Kevin Czinger and the factory that refuses to stand still
He grew up building hot rods in Cleveland, took a detour through Yale and Wall Street, and returned to the factory floor. With his son Lukas, Kevin Czinger is trying to give manufacturing the freedom to change its mind.
Lisa Atherton and the education of an unlikely CEO
An ice cream franchise, an Air Force budget office and a tiltrotor program helped prepare Lisa Atherton to lead Textron. Her career makes a case for taking the next job seriously before imagining the one after it.
David Gitlin and the art of changing the machinery
After two decades in aerospace, David Gitlin took charge of Carrier and began changing what belonged inside it. His next test reaches from the home thermostat to the data center.
Kelly Ortberg and the distance between the office and the airplane
An Iowa engineer spent decades supplying the aircraft industry. Then Boeing called him out of retirement, and he moved to Seattle to get closer to the people building the planes.
Jim Taiclet and the space between the machines
He learned to lead in a transport cockpit and spent 17 years running a cell-tower business. At Lockheed Martin, Jim Taiclet is betting that the connections between machines can matter as much as the machines themselves.
Philip van der Burg and the business of a second take-off
The former investment banker helped build a drone business at Carbonix. At Kite Aero, he is putting acquired aircraft, flight software and Australian manufacturing to work on the same stubborn problem: making uncrewed aviation a repeatable business.
Hadrian makes the factory the product
A missile can wait on a single metal part. Hadrian is betting that the way to shorten that wait is to redesign the factory around software, then sell the capacity.
Castelion’s real weapon is the factory.
Blackbeard flies at hypersonic speed. Castelion’s bigger bet is that America can build enough of them to matter - and afford to keep building.
Shan Mohta’s most useful design was a change of plan
He built hardware at Microsoft, Apple, and Skydio. With Vendra, Shan Mohta had to learn a different engineering skill: letting go of a product so he could get closer to the parts.
Jennifer Crean and the business of getting to liftoff
Satellites need engineers. They also need someone who can make the numbers, schedules and partnerships work. Jennifer Crean has built a career in that space between the ambition and the launch.
Tim Ellis and the factory at the end of the world
He went to Los Angeles to write movies. A student rocket lab sent him toward a different kind of production: printing the machinery for a future beyond Earth.
Sebastian Fischer and the art of changing the flight plan
From planetary spacecraft to delivery drones and self-driving cars, Sebastian Fischer built a career around making complex machines work together. At Wardstone, the company he co-founded with his brother, the next adjustment is bringing missile defense closer to the ground.
Eric Ingram and the useful art of getting out of the way
Eric Ingram built Scout Space to help spacecraft understand their surroundings. After five years as CEO, he began a different kind of navigation: finding the right moment to hand over the controls.
Kerem Ozmen and the Cost of Making Things Real
From Reno’s startup community to nuclear power, remote computing and electric racing, Kerem Ozmen has built an investing career around a stubborn question: what does it take to get an ambitious machine into the world?
Rajeev Amara and the value of things that have to work
From elevator maintenance to aerospace components, Rajeev Amara has built Arcline around businesses with a practical job to do. His support for educators reveals another interest in institutions whose usefulness grows through other people.