Recently Jeff Ahrstrom took the position as President of USACH (Elgin, IL). Not too long ago we caught up with him in his role as CEO of Ingersoll Milling Machine in Rockford, IL for a brief interview. It was an auspicious occasion where companies such as Lockheed and NASA were on hand to congratulate Ingersoll staff on the work they have done thus far on important aerospace projects. Ahrstrom has many years in machining and fabricating that he brought to Ingersoll a few years ago. The company has been in growth mode with some long-term science, aerospace, and military projects. He addresses the concept of the multi-generational manufacturing project—large, complex jobs that will be a major part of a manufacturing pro’s career.
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Fifth Wave Manufacturing: Today we had some presentations from Lockheed and NASA, the Artemis program, and your involvement in that. My question is could you talk about the significance of that partnership and the manufacturing unit.
Jeff Ahrstrom: We’ve had a relationship with Lockheed on the Artemis, specifically on the Orion program, the crew capsule program that goes back a decade. This is America’s return to human space flight. So there has to be that deep relationship [between partners]. Â But I think more importantly, you have to build that trust between the organizations to understand what you can or can’t do, how you can do it. You look at the parts that you saw out there, these are massive parts that come in as large forgings weighing tens of thousands of pounds, and they leave here weighing hundreds of pounds, <laugh>. And we do that in determining how do we fixture it, how do we tool it? What are the tool paths that we do? What are the machinings and how do these parts cut and move?
So I think that’s why it’s so important. They have a partner that’s local, a partner that has an established capability in here, and a partner that knows what they’re doing. Today we recognized some of the master machinists that we have here that have been here from Artemis 1 that recently flew. And we’re making parts for Orion 6, 7, and 8 now, parts that will go to the moon, go to Mars and back. We’re doing it here.
FWM: Yeah, that’s pretty exciting stuff. One thing we talked about not long ago was you coming into this business a few years ago, like you did, with lots of experience in machining and fabricating.  Now, you have a very busy job. You have a seemingly very fun job.
JA: You know, it should be illegal <laugh>. I’ve been in this industry for a couple of years. I started out working on machines and fixing machines as a trainee. Going all the way up through application and coming now to have this opportunity to lead this organization. So I love it. It’s in my blood. I tell guys on the floor, you know, it’s fun to go on the floor and talk about alignments and how are we gonna align that, how are we gonna build this machine, because it’s something that gets in your blood. And the thing that I love is some of the young guys we got coming up and some of the old guys like me, the passion is the same. It transcends sense generations. It transcends companies.
It’s about people that love making things, people that love making things for the United States of America. People that love making a submarine part in the morning or a part for a 787 or an F-35 in the afternoon to be able to go from a titanium part to aluminum part to a carbon fiber part, or a 3D printed part. This is what we’re doing today. For the young engineers that are just coming up, conceiving of these things, to the guys that are on the shop floor actually making the parts, it really gives me heart. We’re starting to regain interest in this because we, truthfully, we’ve gone two generations without rebuilding this. And we’ve lost so many great American machine tool companies. There is a small cadre left, and it’s great, we’re rebuilding them. And I hope, I really hope that we see more American machine tool companies grow and give us competition. Come chase us guys. I want you to.
FWM: We talked about this topic a little bit on the shop floor, that even the projects are becoming multi-generational—not just the companies, right? So how does that play into your need to recruit people?
JA: You know, before there was always an internal pipeline when you had companies that had 2,000 or 3,000 people. We are just not that size anymore, given competition out in the world. So now we’re actively going out looking for veterans. We love having veterans come in here. We’re going into some grammar schools and high schools with different programs. We’ve partnered with an organization called Champion Now, and what they do is they bring manufacturing concepts to grammar schools and high schools. We’re going to be in all of Rockford public schools. We’re going to have them come through Ingersoll at some point. And in essence, we set up a mini factory to help them, we let them make a pen. And we’ll have a high school student that will direct them around these multiple stations.
These grammar school kids will walk out with a pen that they made, that they constructed. And then we’re gonna take them on a tour of the factory and show them that you can graduate from this to this to get them thinking about what they can do. And again, manufacturing’s about the engineer that designs the part. It’s about the manufacturing engineer that does the math and writes the code to drive the machine. It’s about the pipefitter, the electrician, the master assembler that puts those parts together. It’s about the master machinist that will grind that spacer within millions of an inch, and the complex machines that will make those parts for Orion. That’s what manufacturing is. Those are the opportunities that we give them.
And you’re right, when you talk about multi-generation, we have programs now like the giant Magellan telescope. It’s a program that we first started over seven years ago. So we have people that started quoting it, and now we’re gonna have people who are coming in that will be the ones that are doing the programming and machining, they’re probably in their late twenties. And then by the time we finish this program, and Magellan Telescope completes its first science in the mid-2030s, they’ll be in their mid-thirties, they’ll be the senior people in the company. That’s what gives me great heart. We have a few former high school interns that have started jobs, they were high school kids last year, and interned with us. Now I have one that’s a pipefitter. I have one that’s in assembly, I have another one that’s in engineering. We’re going to send them to school, they’re going to work for us. In 15 to 20 years they’ll be the gray-haired guy standing here talking.