Getting off to a flying start!

Mike Richardson meets with Mississippi Development Authority executive director Glenn McCullough, Jr. to hear more about the agency’s involvement in nurturing today’s engineers that will work on tomorrow’s aircraft.

Mississippi is home to some of the world’s most advanced aerospace manufacturing. NASA’s Stennis Space Centre on the Mississippi Gulf Coast continues to be the largest rocket engine test complex in the US, whilst virtually every commercial aircraft in the world has at least one component made in Mississippi. Today, Mississippians produce everything from helicopters to composite jet engine components.

With Boeing now in South Carolina and Airbus in Alabama, Mississippi is seeing a great number of global OEMs entering the southern US to either do business or supply parts to these two companies. Mississippi’s strategic location and aerospace workforce expertise makes it an ideal location for investment consideration by such OEMs.

“Per capita Mississippi has more global aerospace leaders than any other state in the US,” begins Glenn McCullough, Jr., executive director of the Mississippi Development Authority. “We’re seeing an upturn in investment. For example, Raytheon recently announced USD $100 million of capital investment in Forest, Mississippi for next-generation radar systems which will add many new jobs and realise the construction of a new facility in Forest.”

It’s all happening in the State of Mississippi. PG Technologies in Ellisville, is a joint venture of GE Aviation and Praxair. Airbus recently celebrated an expanding contract with the US Army for Lakota light utility helicopters, which are assembled in Columbus. General Atomics recently announced its twelfth expansion in Tupelo. It’s a USD $10 million capital investment, creating 60 new careers with 600 Mississippians now employed at the company.

Helping educate the area’s workers is the Mississippi Polymer Institute (MPI), a non-profit industrial outreach arm that serves to foster business growth. It was born out of the School of Polymers & High Performance Materials and is associated with the University of Southern Mississippi.

“Our staff is comprised of composite experts in polymer technologies, which are both very interesting and trending upwards - especially in the aerospace sector,” states Dr Monica Tisack, director of the Mississippi Polymer Institute. “Our scope covers technical services, such as material synthesis and testing, and we can offer a great scale-up facility for composites. A lot of aerospace-related work takes place here, and it’s a great bridge for companies because we can help them grow and become more competitive.

“One of the key things we did with GE Aviation, Praxair and PGT involves workforce training, where we engage with the customer, take requests for information and understand exactly what it is about the products being manufactured that the workers and operators can comprehend. We tailor the training, bring the employees into the classroom and undertake a lot of hands-on experiences so that the operators learn the fundamentals of the materials they’re working with and the kinds of issues to look out for. The operators become much more engaged, and when they are more engaged, the quality goes up, yields go up and the company has a better bottom line. I call this ‘structured property relationships and performance’. It’s an exciting time; it’s like living in a science fiction movie right now because we have new technologies which are driving innovation. It’s real exciting to be training the new workforce of the day.”

Blue skies ahead

I ask whether the technology readiness levels of the skills being taught are already fit for purpose and productionised, or do they have more to do with ‘blue-sky thinking’?

“Let me be really clear: I’m all about commercial orientation and it’s very important to understand fundamentals, but I wouldn’t call it ‘blue-sky’ at all,” states Tisack. “We’re very interested in helping companies become more competitive, so it’s applied to their specific processes.”

But kids in schools aren’t really that interested in engineering disciplines, are they? What are the challenges that the state faces in helping enthuse young people to join our industry?

“It’s heart-warming for me to know that there are still kids interested in materials science and when they come through, they already have that love of the profession. In terms of training for corporations, the first thing we do is go out onto the shop floor and talk to the engineers. We understand their production processes, where the weak spots are, and what the most important things are for their employees to know, and we develop a training programme around that.”

McCullough is seeing the state’s schoolkids making great improvements in reading and maths. By the time they reach the eighth grade, Mississippi offers its Pathways to Possibilities programme where eighth graders are taken to a two-day career fair where companies like NASA, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman show them that if they want to be a pilot or astronaut, or if they want to be an engineer that designs unmanned aerospace systems, they can achieve those goals in a few years with the right academic requirements in science, engineering and maths.

“We’re trying to show the pathway from enrolment to eventual employment within companies,” McCullough concludes. “We’re encouraging internships and apprenticeships, and we’re seeing the partnerships between companies and education establishments.

“The people of Mississippi want careers in aerospace. When it comes to aerospace and composite materials manufacturing, it’s not just a job: these people are finding it’s something they really enjoy doing.”

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