Mack said her main objective on the board of directors is to “ shepherd the growth of the business financially in preparing for the technological challenges ahead . Not only to produce the current platform but also to continue innovating and growing the company .”
One of the company tenets is to design for manufacturability and mass production . They have a partner with the AS9100-certified Zepher , Inc . to conduct that work when they are ready . “ Most UASs are not built for high volume , low cost . The reality is that the payloads end up costing three times as much as the structure ,” Mack said . She aims to see the Z1 produced to get the product to “ warfighters .” She added , “ It doesn ’ t do any good to have a UAS for the warfighter if you can ’ t get it to the warfighter .”
Additionally , they are looking at the supply chain with this product , “ We ’ ve seen with the global supply chain issues how critical it is to have manufacturability as your highest criteria . ( We are ) doing as much inhouse as possible to eliminate global supply chain issues , as a barrier to on-time delivery .”
Stolz said the team at ZFL is ripe for this role of inventing a future UAS different from anything else on the market . “ We saw a niche market and many UAS products , but the idea of the Z1 came from our aerospace engineer .” He noted that in addition to Coatney , they have a team of nine employees and are hiring more . “ Our entire team has spent time in UAS companies . We ’ ve all seen it done elsewhere , and we feel there is a better way to create the right UAS platform now .”
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