Author name: Ethan Plotkin

“We recently created as new YouTube video with my road-notes from this year’s DoD Maintenance Symposium, coming out next week. In the meantime…. Check out this great overview of the conference by Kevin Sampels. Given the rising tensions and the great power struggle with China, I want to foot-stomp Kevin’s emphasis on the IMPERATIVE of […]

“I enjoyed sitting alongside some smart folks at the AAAA Cribbins Readiness Conference recently in Huntsville, Alabama. Our panel was called Maintaining Readiness Through Supply Chain Risk Management (SCRM). Good to hear about the how the Army and Bell have put in place a comprehensive SCRM framework for FLRAA. My perspective? electronics obsolescence is the single largest

“Great first hand insights of what it takes to expand domestic production (and mining) of critical raw materials. One of several fantastic presentations today!”

“Apart from encouraging folks to consider external suppliers to more easily solve their electronics obsolescence issues, this video was an interesting experience in AI. Despite a little post-production, the pictures and music were all AI generated!”

In these times when globalization creates an unavoidable overlap between commercial and defense supply chains, partnerships (both global and domestic, commercial and government) are a critical success factor in doing successful business in the world today. It also feels a lot better than impersonal transactional relationships.

It’s exciting to see the US moving closer to a European level of service for public transportation. As someone who’s ridden their fair share of European trains over the years (and currently doing a 50 minute each way car-commute) I have found that I get a lot more LIVING done on a train than in

My internal movie critic screams, “If you only attend one obsolescence management conference this year, make it this one!” In all seriousness: for anyone who is struggling with the discontinuation of a product by its supplier, this will be worthwhile. #iiom2024

It seems in our collective best interest to insist on ways to mitigate the environmental impacts of all manufacturing industries. While it’s unreasonable to expect the semiconductor manufacturing industry to solve the problem overnight, what if we establish some maximum contamination thresholds with timelines and incentives for industry to figure out how to mitigate and

Great commercial. There are real opportunities out there for young professionals to make a good living while rebuilding American manufacturing and strengthening national and economic security. Now, that’s a good gig!

Privileged to be involved in an industry panel that took place at the recent DoD SCRM Summit. Great example of the types of government and industry collaboration that are essential to secure resilient and efficient supply chains for our country. Huge thank you to the OSD team who invited NDIA to participate and to the