The Manufacturing Executive

Co-founder and CEO of Phaseshift Technologies, Fazal Mahmood, will tell you that much of modern industry still runs on metal alloys introduced half a century ago. Better ones are possible. Proving one works is harder and far more expensive than inventing it, and that's where most new materials die.

In this episode, we explore why that's finally changing. You'll hear where additive manufacturing landed after the hype burned off, how technologies like nuclear fusion and hotter-running aircraft engines have outrun the materials they were built from and why a supply shock in tungsten pushed some of the most change-resistant industries in the world to start looking for alternatives. We'll also get into what a small-to-midsize manufacturer should actually do with any of this.

Ask everyone in your company one question: who's responsible for safety? About half will say the safety manager, and Brian Fielkow, consultant and author of Making Safety Happen, will tell you that half has it wrong. In this episode, we'll unpack why safety is a bottom-line business decision that starts with the leader, and why a safety failure really costs about five times what your insurance loss runs show. You'll hear how to harness the frontline leaders you already have, how to market safety to your own people, and a smarter way to respond when something goes wrong.

The headlines say American manufacturing has a workforce crisis. Alex Torrey, co-founder and CEO of AIC, America's Innovation Corporation, will tell you the real constraint is workflow. He sees component shops running at 20 to 50 percent utilization when world class is north of 90, held back by decision-making infrastructure built for a world that doesn't exist anymore. In this episode, we'll explore physical AI, the shift from software that moves data to software that moves matter, and the small, founder-led manufacturers whose components make it possible. You'll hear why Alex calls those shops national treasures, why he thinks the goal is outmaneuvering dependence on China rather than outproducing it and what owner-operators nearing a transition should know about the third option most of them have never been offered.

Books are more than 80% bought online. Electronics, more than 50%. Custom manufactured parts? Less than 1%. CEO of Xometry, Sanjeev Sahni, believes that gap makes custom parts the most underpenetrated e-commerce category in the world, and that closing it has less to do with manufacturing capability than with speed and data. In this episode, we'll explore why an engineer can design a part in an afternoon and then lose days to manual RFQs and hit-or-miss supplier matching. You'll hear how online marketplaces are dissolving the 30 to 50 mile radius that defined machine shops for generations, why a Houston shop built on oil and gas is now doing aerospace work, and what changes for a shop owner who would rather make parts than chase sales. We'll also touch on why Sanjeev insists his company call manufacturers partners rather than suppliers.

Robots rarely break. Vision systems keep getting smarter. In automation, the technology has gotten so good that it's no longer what separates one company from another. Darragh de Stonndún, CEO of Automated Industrial Robotics, will tell you what does: the people and the culture behind it. In this episode, we unpack how he built AIR across six facilities in the US, UK and Ireland by evaluating every acquisition on culture first and walking away from impressive companies when the fit wasn't right. You'll hear what he looks for in a capital partner beyond the capital itself, how he gets a customer the identical experience no matter which facility touches the project and why he assembles the best experts across the whole company rather than handing the work to the nearest plant. We'll also get into where he expects AI to earn its keep in manufacturing, and the line he draws between using a new tool to do better work and using it as a shortcut.