FALCON STRUCTURES
HOW
INDUSTRY 4.0
IS AFFECTING
REAL-WORLD
MANUFACTURING
BY: JOHN MCALONAN
PRESIDENT & CEO FALCON STRUCTURES
John McAlonan
John McAlonan is a business executive who is
passionate about helping teams reach their
fullest potential. John believes that people want
to come to work each and every day knowing
that what they do makes a difference.
He recently joined Falcon Structures as President
and COO. Falcon Structures is a rapidly growing
business specializing in repurposed shipping
containers for secure storage, equipment
protection, portable workspace, or temporary
housing.
Under John's leadership, ATS was twice selected
as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work for in
Texas. Prior to becoming president, John served
as the Vice President of Marketing and Sales
for nine years. Prior to that role, John spent two
years as a systems engineer, helping deliver
real-time tactical command and control systems
to warfighters.
John has an electrical engineering degree
from The Citadel, the Military College of
South Carolina, where he attended on a 4-year
Army scholarship and was a distinguished
military graduate. Upon graduation, he was
commissioned as an Air Defense Artillery officer
in the US Army where he served on active duty
and in the reserves for eight years. While in
college John was inducted into Tau Beta Pi, the
national engineering honor society.
THE FOURTH Industrial Revolution
(Industry 4.0) is upon us, like it or
not. Much like the others, it has come
seemingly out of nowhere, but it is the
culmination of things that have been
boiling beneath the surface for years.
At its core, it is the trend toward both
data exchange and automation within
the manufacturing sphere. Buzzwords
would include cognitive computing, cyber-
physical systems, the “internet of things,”
and cloud computing such as CRM (among
many others).
Industry 4.0 builds upon the
breakthroughs that came before it,
including robotics, artificial intelligence,
and the burgeoning field of autonomy.
Not only has this seen an increase in
automation, especially in service and
manufacturing industries, but it has
also brought along with it a huge uptake
in the capabilities of communication
and connectivity in bringing people and
businesses closer together.
According to a February 2017 report
from the McKinsey Global Institute,
Reinventing Construction: A Route to
Higher Productivity, productivity in the
manufacturing, retail, and agriculture
sectors has improved nearly 1500
percent since 1945 while productivity in
construction over the same timeframe
has barely improved. One only needs to
follow the money to understand the gap
between the technology and construction
markets. Katerra, one of the most widely
known startups trying to disrupt the
construction industry, received at least
$865M in venture capital in 2018 alone
with another $700M expected in 2019.
The benefits of prefab and modular
construction—outlined in a 2011 report
26
from McGraw-Hill Construction—have
the potential to significantly shorten
project schedules by four weeks or more
and decrease overall budgets by 6 percent
or more. If a 2011 report suggested those
improvements, it is not hard to believe
that larger, more recent market trends
like Industry 4.0 have the potential to
realize even more benefits.
How does this look in a real-world
example? Take a look at Falcon Structures.
In 2002, Stephen Shang decided to launch
a new container storage business from the
ground up, so he recruited a partner, wrote
a business plan, and Falcon Storage was
born. Founded in 2003, Falcon Structures
repurposes steel shipping containers
into AC462 code-compliant modules
for container-based buildings, as well
as single container structures for living,
working, and storage.
Initially, the majority of Falcon Storage’s
revenue was derived from renting storage
containers to construction companies.
When the 2008 recession cratered
the construction business, Shang
reformulated the business plan, pivoting
the focus from renting containers to
building training structures for the
military using containers.
Falcon has manufactured container
buildings of all sizes including the largest
shipping container structure to date, the
122-container stadium, Fortress Obetz.
Falcon’s growing client base includes