Northwest Aerospace News February | March 2018 Issue No. 1 | Page 49

PACIFIC NORTHWEST AEROSPACE ALLIANCE SPOTLIGHT
A unique approach to talent
Dylan Aerospace was founded by Darrell Sutherland, a visionary
who carefully selects the right combination of people to bring that
vision to reality. While Darrell has over 30 years of experience in
the aerospace machining world, he’s not constrained by traditional
thinking. When designing his team, he recruits both within and
outside of the traditional aerospace talent pool. Tim Temple came
from the insurance industry, with a strong business background
and—perhaps more importantly for Dylan’s automation efforts—a
deep understanding of organizational systems, IT development and
implementation. Tim’s partner, Sales and Supplier Manager Tim
Evans, is a seasoned aerospace type with countless relationships
and a reputation for getting things done. The combination of tradi-
tional knowledge and strong relationships, coupled with an outside
perspective and prior experience of technologies that are only now
coming of age in aerospace, is proving to be a key ingredient of
Dylan’s enviable success.
However, success isn’t leading to complacency within Dylan; own-
ership and management are already focused on the challenges of the
next decade and inspiring the next generation of aerospace minds to
actively participate in Dylan’s growth. They recognize that one of
the largest challenges in manufacturing today is the lack of qualified
and experienced candidates for all functions of the business. This is
a major concern for Darrell, who shares that, “Unfortunately, can-
didates are often drawn by the allure of the final products produced
by OEMs and sometimes have little understanding of where all the
cool stuff originally comes from; manufacturing often isn’t thought
of and therefore isn’t trained towards, let alone aspired to.” Unde-
terred, he decided that if there’s a risk that they can’t find the talent,
they need to create it…and the only way to create interest in this
arena is by making manufacturing ”cool.” To that end, Dylan has
begun developing an in-house training facility to inspire and create
the skilled labor of the future. This includes the investment in two
human-like Baxter collaborative robots that students can interact
with and practice their skills outside of Dylan’s routine operations!
Come and meet the team
Dylan Aerospace, in less than two decades, has had substantial
success in an industry known for having high barriers to entry. A
willingness to adopt the technologies required for high stakes, high
volume production, coupled with their out-of-the-box thinking
with teamwork and talent, will only serve to make this dynamic
company—and ultimately their customers—more successful. To
learn more about Dylan come and meet them at PNAA’s 2018
conference Leading through Change: Managing Transformation,
February 12 th -15 th , Seattle North.
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