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The Space Industry by satsearch - sharing stories about the businesses taking us into orbit.
We delve into the opinions and expertise of the people behind the commercial space companies of today, who could become the household names of tomorrow. Find out more about the companies and technologies discussed on this show at satsearch.com.
0:06: Hi and welcome to the Space Industry podcast by satsearch.
0:09: My name is Narayan, COO at satsearch, and I'll be your host as we journey through the space industry.
0:14: The space sector is going through some seismic changes, promising to generate significant impact for life on Earth and enable humans to sustain life elsewhere in the cosmos.
0:24: At satsearch, we work with buyers and suppliers across the global marketplace, helping to accelerate missions through our online platform.
0:32: Based on our day to day work supporting commercial activity.
0:36: My aim here during this podcast is to shed light on the boots on the ground developments across the globe that are helping foster and drive technical and commercial innovation.
0:46: So come join me as we delve into a fascinating, challenging, and ultimately inspiring sector.
0:53: Hello everyone.
0:55: In today's episode, we're gonna be talking to Laura Crabtree, co-founder and CEO at Epsilon3.
1:01: Epsilon3 is a satsearch Trusted Supplier who are helping innovative teams streamline complex work from engineering, assembly and testing to certification and live operations within highly regulated industries like space, aviation, energy, and robotics.
1:18: Epsilon3's web-based platform is used by NASA, Blue Origin, Redwire, Axiom, and several other space companies out there to execute mission critical procedures.
1:29: In today's episode, we're going to be speaking about the new manufacturing execution system feature built by Epsilon3.
1:37: And how it helps ensure compliance with quality management system standards which are mission critical for all aerospace manufacturers.
1:46: Hi, Laura.
1:47: Thanks for taking the time again to speak with us and welcome back to the Space Industry podcast.
1:52: Yeah, thanks again for having me.
1:53: We have been in touch over several topics.
1:55: The Epsilon3 has made progress over the last couple of years, and I noticed that you guys have a new manufacturing execution system that has a lot of new features that will help teams start up building spacecraft.
2:08: And this particular podcast, we'll be going over a few of these things, but to kick off and to rewind us for the audience who are probably listening to the story of Epsilon3, probably for the first time, can you briefly mention about how Epsilon3 works with the spacecraft building teams out there?
2:27: Sure, so we help a lot of teams and not not just spacecraft teams and launch private space stations, engine development, hypersonic vehicles, etc.
2:40: as well as entry vehicles and satellites.
2:43: So we help them not only digitize but maintain traceability and version history of all of their operations.
2:55: So we do that by providing an interface for our customers to Fully digitize every piece of their workflow when it comes to build integration, tests and operations, and by that I mean, you know, getting paper out of the control room, getting paper out of all of your testing areas, all of your different test beds, and maintaining the traceability of all of the operational documentation in Epsilon3 as well as recorded decision making, as it pertains to, you know, Anomalies or as it pertains to what parts did you use, when did you use them, who signed off to say that you passed a specific criteria during a test.
3:41: You have a lot of quality assurance and engineers and a lot of manufacturing and a lot of technicians utilizing the product for those types of applications.
3:52: We know that there are several space missions teams that actually continue to rely on spreadsheets or legacy tools for managing manufacturing and testing workflows.
4:04: What according to you are some of the inefficiencies in using such old tools out there and how easy are you making it for those teams to then adopt a solution like Epsilon3?
4:15: There aren't a lot of roadblocks to people getting onboarded and starting to use Epsilon3.
4:20: We have tried to make it as easy and seamless as possible.
4:24: We have developed an importer that will read any type of document and convert it into an Epsilon3 format so that people have a starting stone.
4:33: We also have an An easy way for people to automatically create work instructions or procedures via natural language prompts, and then they go from there.
4:45: So when you think about, you know, you sit in front of a computer and you have writer's block, you don't know where to start, you can utilize our creation and import tools to start from somewhere, or if you have a starting point, you can upload that with to no friction on getting started and just that getting started piece gets you over the hump of what am I going to do next and how will I communicate what I did with the next person that comes in either the next shift or when you have turnover in your organization?
5:17: How are you recording that knowledge transfer from one person to another?
5:22: I noticed that there are some very powerful logos of customers.
5:26: On your web page, including some really big brand names in the space industry who have adopted Epsilon3.
5:32: Are there any specific customer stories that you remember vividly where Epsilon3 has created a deep impact for their particular workflows?
5:41: Yeah, you know, I, I like to share the success stories of our customers.
5:45: It's really the reason why I got into this is because I wanted to help people move faster and reduce errors.
5:53: So people share their successes and, you know, how much time they've saved on certain things or how many potential things they they could have missed if they hadn't had it documented in Epsilon3, but I'll highlight just one or two different.
6:08: that people have shared with me, with, with customer names removed, but I had one customer that came on board and wanted to make an internal tool and was doing the trade between making an internal tool or onboarding with Epsilon3, and they had previously had some missteps in their operations and they onboarded with Epsilon3 and And since then, they have had numerous successes in multiple different product lines in their business, and a lot of their team will come to us and ask for new features on either traceability, reporting, documentation, and they just had so many engineers spending time late into the night on version control, version history, red lines, or suggested changes from Their teammates that this freed up a lot of their time to really make sure that their operation was buttoned up before they went into launch or spacecraft operations, and so that has helped them be successful.
7:12: It really takes the brain cycles out of what they were spending a lot of time doing to focus on their mission at hand.
7:20: And then another customer that I had, when I first started talking to them.
7:25: I asked them how are they managing their operational decisions, how are they managing traceability of what parts they were testing, when they went out into the field, and they told me that they were managing it on a spreadsheet, and that when they went out into the field to test, they printed out papers onto a clipboard and then they had to transcribe all of that data back into a computer so that They could track and trace everything back to when and where it happened, but that's all done automatically with Epsilon3.
7:58: Not only can they check out the hardware to test against it and have a list of all of the different procedures in which that hardware was used, they can also track the tools that they used during that operation, calibration needs and date of those tools.
8:13: So I had another customer that came to me with, you know, I used.
8:18: Hardware that was not calibrated anymore because I was trying to move really quickly and the calibration data was stored somewhere else, and so they wanted that all to be stored in Epsilon3, and, and we provided that solution to them.
8:30: But, you know, now that that first customer that I was talking about, they now have everything integrated and when they go out to the test site.
8:38: They have everything on a tablet, and their team stays in sync with one another without the need of a walkie-talkie or a voice panel, or cell phones and text messages or slack and matter most, they really stay in touch on what's going on with the Epsilon3, and then they have full traceability of the hardware.
8:59: So, that was a very long answer, but hopefully that that helps, you understand.
9:04: Yeah, absolutely.
9:06: That actually provides a lot of clarity on how exactly the life cycle works and what is exactly the value in adoption.
9:14: We now see that the industry is moving towards some level of maturity because companies are looking to achieve reliability and reliable processes as they have now proven out their initial platforms and are looking to achieve scale.
9:29: When you consider the manufacturing challenges and creating reliability in the manufacturing process, a lot of these companies when then look to adopt certifications.
9:39: The popular certifications include certifications such as ISO 9000 and AS 9100.
9:47: Is there a role for Epsilon3 in helping teams in achieving such certifications?
9:52: Yeah, the certifications that that you're talking about are certifications that are unique to mostly in the aerospace industry, and I just want to mention that there there are ISO certifications for medical devices, there are ISO certifications for literally any industry and Most of these certifications and, you know, AS 9100 included are tracking a lot of traceability, revision control, and quality within your workflows to make sure that you're not missing steps that you're making sure that you're upholding.
10:29: I'm only executing the most, the most recent released copy.
10:33: I had all of the sign-offs, and that is directly what we do when we talk about work constructions, test procedures and operational procedures, and a lot of the companies that we work with have been able to use their records from Epsilon3 to Gain ISO and ASI 100 certifications very easily and you know, I had one customer who had documentation everywhere and it was going to be a very long process to get them certification, so they onboarded purely based on the fact that this would save them months' worth of time for AS 9100 certification.
11:16: Undertaking the effort for achieving certifications is obviously not a very easy task that is out there.
11:22: I'd like to understand here what exactly is the incentive for some of these teams to go after such certifications and how exactly are these teams then incentivized from you and your team to be then using Epsilon3 in fast tracking this process.
11:40: So the certifications is basically to certify them for specific missions or it's part of a contract award that you need to be certified.
11:52: And in order for that, you need to have all your documentation sort of buttoned up and in one place, and because every group at any specific company likes to do things their own way, you'll end up with the electrical engineering process, the structures teams process, the GNC process, and everyone will do it slightly differently, and so you're going to have to monitor and maintain documentation for 10 different.
12:20: Groups and if you did it all at Epsilon3, you would have consistency and in sign off revision control for hardware and software teams and testing workflows.
12:33: And so you basically would have all of those problems solved so that you didn't have to have a huge audit and certification meeting, board meeting, etc.
12:45: so that you could make that certification process as fast as humanly possible.
12:50: Now it's quite clear that based on this discussion, the ultimate customer is then driving a lot of these.
12:57: In the supply chain so that they are then incentivizing these companies to adopt reliable processes in the manufacturing.
13:07: Now, if I take an example where let's say the US government is the end customer, are they the ones who are then creating these incentives to then have some of these companies adopt such certification standards?
13:20: Yes, I, I think that's exactly right.
13:23: That that certification is just going to assure the customer, not my customer, the customer's customer, so government or other governing body that your organization takes.
13:36: Quality and documentation very seriously and has all their ducks in a row when it comes to being able to being able to create a report based on specific standards for documentation of the work that you've done.
13:52: What has been your experience with respect to who is then looking to adopt these certification standards?
13:58: Are these certifications limited to only large aerospace companies like Boeing or Lockheed Martin, given that they have a pretty large stake in the US government being their customer, or are also young companies, including some of the startups who are growing, looking to achieve such process standardization and certifications?
14:20: Yeah, I think it's, it's really just the aerospace standard.
14:25: A lot of suppliers, manufacturers are only going to work with people who have certifications, but I think in the end, isn't the government kind of always at least part of the customer, the end customer?
14:38: I think mostly all roads lead to the government.
14:42: In some way, shape or form, so.
14:45: But really it's, it's just the standard across the aerospace industry.
14:49: So far, we were able to discuss some of the underlying incentives for organizations to look at certifications to improve their manufacturing processes, but we actually haven't touched upon what is the process of adoption when it comes to tools like Epsilon3 in this process.
15:09: Can you briefly describe what is the process in itself and how are companies then on boarded?
15:16: So, the process of adoption depends on the size and complexity of the customer, but generally speaking, people import all of their data and set up their instance of Epsilon 3 within a day.
15:32: They will be able to log in the same day, and we've tried to make it as easy and streamlined as possible, but if somebody has Really complex workflows, our customer team would then work with them over the course of the first month that they work with us to really make sure that we understand their process and make a lot of suggestions on how we can help them set up their processes in in the app itself.
16:00: Generally, it is our observation that people in the space industry don't like to change things quite a lot, especially when it's working.
16:07: Given that this introduces uncertainty and that may cause an impact on the reliability of space missions itself.
16:15: So I'm very curious to know what is your experience been with respect to organizations on how they Warm up to adoption of tools like Epsilon3.
16:26: Are they then limited to maybe small companies adopting it at an early stage and then working with it to then achieve a new process in itself from the get-go?
16:36: Or do you also have the specific processes that you have started to build to work with larger organizations for them to then Take into account new tools like Epsilon3 to then go into streamlining their manufacturing and engineering processes.
16:55: Yeah, I mean, we started to service the smaller startups of the industry, mostly because I wanted them to be able to compete with the large companies like Boeing or Lockheed or Northrop where I used to work, but what we've found is that a lot of like medium to large companies also need solutions like this because they are trying to be able to move faster.
17:24: The thing that the large companies have in their favor is they have more money and more people, but that doesn't always mean that they're as nimble as small companies.
17:34: A 20 to 50 person company can move really quickly, can make decisions really quickly, and can Sometimes surpass, and so we've had larger companies talking to us about how they can learn to be more nimble and learn to sort of adjust their timelines and their expectations based on how the small companies do things.
17:59: And so, We have seen good adoption from larger companies purely based on the fact that they want to learn from what the smaller companies are doing, and the smaller companies are taking their lessons learned from the larger companies.
18:12: So I think you're going to see a lot of really interesting things happening around the industry as that sort of comes to a head.
18:20: Now, there's an interesting supply chain perspective that I want to go into as a part of this discussion.
18:26: There could be organizations who are parent organizations or tier one organizations in the supply chain who are adopting Epsilon3 and their vendors not.
18:38: And there could be the other way around where basically there are tier 2 organizations who have adopted Epsilon3, and then the parent organizations in the supply chain are not.
18:49: Do you see a future where basically there is a cross supply chain adoption in the vendor network for a tool like Epsilon3 and it would go into being almost a standardized tool across the supply chain where no matter where the organization sits in the particular supply chain.
19:13: It then has a way of working with you guys and also through its vendor network.
19:19: And by this, there is transparency across the vendor network and across the supply chain when it comes to traceability and when it comes to streamlining processes when it comes to manufacturing.
19:32: Yeah, I think you should come and build strategy over here and think about what we can, what other problems we can address from the industry.
19:41: I think that was a perfect amalgamation of of all the things that I'm I'm thinking about.
19:46: I mean, it's only logical, right?
19:48: Because at the at the end, the risk is spread through the supply chain and you can do a certain amount of things at the certain organization level, but then if you want to create extremely large impact, then you have to talk across organizations.
20:02: Yeah, I would, I would agree with you.
20:03: You have to think about when your customers sell to your other customers, how does that look?
20:10: And we've already had multiple instances of that, and multiple customers already working together, which makes my heart very happy.
20:22: I am guessing that the impact of such cross supply chain adoption of Epsilon3 will create an extremely deep impact on increasing reliability of space missions.
20:36: That that is my sincere hope and that we are helping to increase the success rate of our space missions, increase and it has already increased in the last 10 years, I mean, exponentially so, right?
20:50: But also increase the reliability of our aircraft.
20:55: when it comes to either military aircraft or commercial aircraft and commercial spacecraft as well, because if you are tracking everything and able to utilize that knowledge for predictive maintenance, predictive failures, you can really get ahead of potential problems and that that is one of the other things that we are looking at, yes.
21:20: Now I'm actually wondering if the adoption of tools like Epsilon3 are limited to teams across countries like the US where basically there is both a mix of volume of manufacturing for space missions and the drive to actually innovate much faster than anywhere else in keeping processes up towards the bleeding edge of innovation.
21:48: Or what has been your experience with respect to adoption of tools like Epsilon3 in other regions, other countries that are out there?
21:57: I think for us, we have customers in so many different countries, and we continue to support all of the customers that we have in, I think it's 10 different countries right now.
22:15: And we want to be part of the entire sector around the world, not just United States, although we are based in the United States and all of our developers are here in the United States, we do have a passion in general for the industry and want to see it continue to grow.
22:33: One last final question before we let you go.
22:36: I'd love to hear from you what would be your vision to see a customer adopt the manufacturing execution system and what do you think they would achieve in the process of implementing it in realizing a particular product.
22:53: I think what I would really love is to have a customer that is mostly an integration customer to when they acquire a product, let's say it's an engine, to be able to not have paper travelers with that engine.
23:12: To be able to see all of the test data and all of the things that have been done to that engine, whether it's build, test, integration, transferred from one customer to another, so that you don't have to go back and ask the supplier.
23:30: Many questions unless you have a failure mode, and then the intent is then for that supplier to come into your version of Epsilon3, to help you debug the problems that you've you're seeing.
23:44: So then it's a collaborative tool across the industry.
23:48: Thank you again, Laura, for appearing as a guest on the Space Industry podcast and explaining so very well how the manufacturing execution system by Epsilon3.
23:57: Is perhaps a game changer for companies building space missions to increase their reliability.
24:03: I wish you and the team at Epsilon3 the very best as you scale this and many other features that I'm sure you have in the pipeline.
24:12: Yeah, thanks so much.
24:13: Great to talk to you.
24:15: For people out there who are looking to get more information on Epsilon3, please check out their satsearch supplier hub, which has all the information that you need to know more about Epsilon3 and what they exactly do.
24:31: Thanks for joining me today for another exciting story from the space industry.
24:35: If you have any comments, feedback, or suggestions, please feel free to write to me at info@satsearch.com.
24:42: And if you're looking to either speed up your space mission development or showcase your capabilities to a global audience, check out our marketplace at satsearch.com.
24:52: In the meantime, go daringly into the cosmos till the next time we meet.