Stability and progress

You joined MD Helicopters at a turbulent time for the company. What changes did you make to secure the stability and confidence in the company that you have today?

I think that the impression in the market was that we weren’t very good at supporting our products, we didn’t have spares and we were slow on responding. So, I knew we needed an executive who knew the aftermarket business inside and out. The aftermarket business is different than a lot of other aspects of our business and I recognized that there had been a haphazard way of looking at our service centers, suppliers and a lot of other things. So we hired Ryan Weeks. He came from Bell and Honeywell, and had a really clear and good vision on what we needed to do to fix our aftermarket. That was a big thing, just focusing on what was really important to service our customers and keep their aircraft flying. The second thing was just to get some orders for aircraft. We brought in a new COO, Harvey Ticlo. Harvey knows Part 21 and Part 145 operations inside and out, and now we have somebody that is running the factory as it should be run. The sales and marketing team have worked really, really hard in the last 12 months to go to customers and get the order book filled up. If you look down the production line, you’ll see it full today. That’s important for the people that work here to know that we have stability and that they have a secure job for a long time to come. Similarly with suppliers; we didn’t have a lot of long-term agreements with the supply base, we aimed to instill the confidence in them that we’re going to be here for a while.

You have an engineering background, does that reflect in the way that you emphasize the importance of aftermarket support, ensuring that customers have the parts they need when they need them?

We’ve had some supplier issues with some parts and my engineering background helps me understand those, such as the machining process, the casting process, and some of these other things. But I don’t dabble in the engineering decisions of “Yes, use this as is, or don’t use this.” I rely on our quality assurance teams and our engineering teams for that. I let our technical experts make those decisions and then abide by those decisions. It really helps that I know the aircraft inside and out from my engineering days and for me to understand the problems thoroughly and listen to our technical experts to decide on the best solutions.

Have your previous leadership experiences translated to your work at MD Helicopters?

I hope so! I have roughly 25 years experience at large companies with both Boeing and Sikorsky, so I am familiar with the really great processes and procedures that large companies have. They are very good at being systemic and systematic. I also have about 15 years of experience at smaller companies where it’s important to know people by their first name. It’s important to communicate on a one-to-one, person-to-person level and to make the changes that need to be made without having to go through months or years of policy changes. With MD Helicopters, I’ve been able to go to the customers myself. I also like being able to walk and talk to the procurement people, talk to the engineering people. Everybody’s here in one campus, so you can walk around and talk to everybody.

What achievements are you most proud of with MD Helicopters and what work still needs to be done?

I think none of it is me, it’s the whole team. For instance, Ashley Sanchez has done a phenomenal job with getting the word out of who we are, what we’re trying to do and where we’re going. Ryan Weeks has done a phenomenal job of identifying issues, and getting our service center agreements in place. Our whole sales team has increased our sales dramatically over the last couple of years. It’s the whole company. Everyone has been pulling together to provide a product and service that I’m proud of. I don’t think there’s any one person that I can attribute it to. It’s getting everybody aligned, myself included. We love the product and we love the customers.

This product is an iconic product that’s been around for a long, long time: it’s bigger than all of us. And it’s just fun. I think I’m trying to instill with everybody that we’re part of something bigger. It’s fun to get this company back on its feet and be where we should be. I think my energy, enthusiasm and vision gets out and is seen by everybody, and everybody picks up on that.

I’m really happy with what the team has done, where everybody is, and what we’ve all accomplished together in the last year and a half. We still got a way to go but we’re building on strong foundations. What we’re doing for the future is asking what we need to do to our product line to refresh it and bring something that’s even more usable to the customer. We want to be a little quicker with our product development and that is what we are looking at now.