With two decades of experience in the aerospace industry, Vivek Saxena saw a need for modernization within the field’s manufacturing and supply-chain operations.
So in 2017, he founded Advisory Aerospace OSC, a Hopkins-based software-development and analytics service provider for complex-product manufacturers. Anticipating headcount and revenue growth over the next year, the company recently secured a nearly $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation as part of an effort to improve the U.S.’s manufacturing capacity.
“The NSF grant is a … validation of our technical credibility as well as the market need in the U.S. to make our high-tech manufacturing globally competitive,” Saxena said.
Since earning his Ph.D. in aerospace and applied math from the University of Cambridge in 1995, Saxena has held several executive positions in the aerospace industry, including with aviation component manufacturer Pratt & Whitney, consulting and tech firm ICF International Inc., as well as aircraft manufacturer Mooney International Corp. as president and CEO, according to his LinkedIn page.
With such experiences, Saxena discovered that despite the use of cutting-edge technology and tools to design aircraft, “the manufacturing of aerospace parts was still in the dark ages," he told the Business Journal.
To solve that problem, Advisory Aerospace, provides analytics to help companies improve their factories' performance metrics. Its software platform, called FactoryTwin, models and simulates a factory’s operations.
The software is already being used in 15 factories across 10 states, with the goal to get into 100 factories within the next three years, Saxena said. The company largely focuses on small- and medium-sized companies in the aerospace and med-tech industries.
NSF’s Small Business Innovation Research grant, which focuses on an optimization tool within Advisory Aerospace's platform, is intended to help the company further scale and commercialize its technology, Saxena said. The company had previously also received a $250,000 grant from NSF as part of a first phase.
Advisory Aerospace’s technology could provide “an affordable and easy-to-use solution” for certain industries and “help strengthen the national defense of the United States by facilitating onshoring of defense manufacturing by making domestic producers more cost competitive,” according to NSF.
The U.S. market for factory analytics is more than $10 billion, while the aerospace and med-tech industries together is about $1.5 billion, Saxena said.
Currently profitable, Advisory Aerospace anticipates doubling its revenue this year compared to last, Saxena said.
Looking ahead, the 12-person company intends to double its headcount within the next 12 to 18 months, he said. It will also look to open a round of seed funding by mid-2023.
