Innovation
Innovation is all around us. It is the catalyst for creativity and new products, services and, my favorite, new weapons systems. Why would I want new weapons systems? Well primarily it has been the core of my employment existence since I was 18 and joined the Navy.
New weapons and creativity are the lifeblood of American industry. Just look at the history of the industrial revolution in the early 1900s and then compare to the rise of the military industrial complex in WWII. Since then, much of the industry in our great nation surrounds the needs of the military for new weapons systems that espouse the tenets of innovation. From guns, to radar, to missiles to warships. The military industry employs hundreds of thousands of people. One program that I was recently on (F-35) employed over 100,000 people in different aspects of the program world wide. That is amazing, and what drove it all? The new and different innovations contained within the weapons platform of a 5th generation fighter aircraft.
The company that I work for is part of that program and many more. We innovate almost on an hourly basis and encourage it at all levels not just special projects engineers. Here is a technical example. One of our young engineers, not a special person, developed a software program that captures movement of tiny sensors with some optical cameras that capture only motion. He showed it to another person who understands Computer Aided Development and they used it do develop a highly immersive environment where engineers can immerse themselves using virtual reality into a developed model to check clearances, form fit and function. This new and innovative system has taken off and is now the basis of designing nearly every aspect of a weapons system. Instead of building first articles that have to be scraped and re-made because things did not fit as designed from drawings, our company is nailing designs the first time saving the customer millions in engineering design costs. That is just the tip of the iceberg in the Model Based Systems Engineering world. It all started from a not so special person who had an idea.
Think about the farming community who is now reclaiming useless or under used lands because drainage in the spring thaw was rendering some lands un-plowable because it was too wet. Farmers now are using buried drainage tiles and pump systems to relieve the water stressed land quickly after thaw and now those lands are useful and productive. Farmers are not special people, they are just hard working Americans who work out problems by innovating and creating solutions to long standing problems that have plagued them for a long time.
New weapons and creativity are the lifeblood of American industry. Just look at the history of the industrial revolution in the early 1900s and then compare to the rise of the military industrial complex in WWII. Since then, much of the industry in our great nation surrounds the needs of the military for new weapons systems that espouse the tenets of innovation. From guns, to radar, to missiles to warships. The military industry employs hundreds of thousands of people. One program that I was recently on (F-35) employed over 100,000 people in different aspects of the program world wide. That is amazing, and what drove it all? The new and different innovations contained within the weapons platform of a 5th generation fighter aircraft.
The company that I work for is part of that program and many more. We innovate almost on an hourly basis and encourage it at all levels not just special projects engineers. Here is a technical example. One of our young engineers, not a special person, developed a software program that captures movement of tiny sensors with some optical cameras that capture only motion. He showed it to another person who understands Computer Aided Development and they used it do develop a highly immersive environment where engineers can immerse themselves using virtual reality into a developed model to check clearances, form fit and function. This new and innovative system has taken off and is now the basis of designing nearly every aspect of a weapons system. Instead of building first articles that have to be scraped and re-made because things did not fit as designed from drawings, our company is nailing designs the first time saving the customer millions in engineering design costs. That is just the tip of the iceberg in the Model Based Systems Engineering world. It all started from a not so special person who had an idea.
Think about the farming community who is now reclaiming useless or under used lands because drainage in the spring thaw was rendering some lands un-plowable because it was too wet. Farmers now are using buried drainage tiles and pump systems to relieve the water stressed land quickly after thaw and now those lands are useful and productive. Farmers are not special people, they are just hard working Americans who work out problems by innovating and creating solutions to long standing problems that have plagued them for a long time.
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