Counting Photons, A Fiber Optic Blog, or Flog, on the state of Fiber Optics in Harsh Environments. November 2008. Cleveland, OH.
COTSWORKS is coming up on its third birthday, and even in the chaos of the financial meltdown and commercial aviation production delays, we're looking forward to it. 3 is a good age, we're beyond the Terrible Twos and operating like a small business and not a start up.
Ironically, the financial meltdown has hit us less than you might think. We really were slow six months ago, now, things are actually picking up. We're glad to see the strike at Boeing over. Being in Cleveland, it was hard to watch for many reasons. First, a lot of our business is tied to Boeing. Second, all of us at COTSWORKS survived the strikes and collapse of the automotive business back in the 80s. Strikes benefit no one and hurt everyone. We're glad to see that management and labor are working together and hope everyone realizes just how much work stoppages affect the supply chain.
Like it or not that supply chain is nationwide and global. When I first started working with Boeing I was surprised to see just how much manufacturing used to be done on S. Marginal in Seattle. You could drive from one end to the other and build an airplane; but then, you didn’t have to worry about selling large contracts to customers outside of the US. Today, the more you outsource to a country, the more that country will likely buy your airplane. The globalization of the economy has thinned the line between borders and between vendor and customer.
While there has been a lot of focus on delays in the 787 and A380 program, the scale of success for both programs depended on sales and development outside of Seattle and France. And if there are doubters about the need for global integration, you only need to look at the Joint Strike Fighter. Even the military has realized that it needs foreign partnerships to succeed.
Speaking of which, I'll be heading over to Amsterdam in March to speak on fiber optics at the Avionics 2009 conference. I look forward to seeing our partners and friends in Europe then.
Ken Applebaum
Director
