Continuous innovation

Hal Chrisman, President of Raisbeck Engineering, talks to Anthony Harrington about the company’s long history of innovative ‘firsts’

Founded in 1982, and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Raisbeck Engineering was founded on the genius of James Raisbeck. It all goes back to when Raisbeck left Boeing to start a career in aircraft design.

Under his direction, the Raisbeck team put together a truly impressive list of ‘firsts’ in the aviation sector, coming up with one innovation after another. Many of these have subsequently been adopted as standard by the OEMs involved.

In 2016 Acorn Growth Companies, a private equity firm specialising in the Aerospace, Defence and Intelligence industries, acquired the company.

AH: Hal, can you tell us something of the journey to your current position of President of Raisbeck Engineering?

HC: It is an interesting but also a somewhat sad story. I’ve been in this industry since 1986, when I started with Williams International, designing jet engines. I took my degree in Michigan and worked for a time at Oracle, a leading software / ERP company, and at Pemco Aviation Group.

Pemco performed military and commercial aircraft maintenance and modifications at the time. And I did extended stints with various consulting firms.

In 2018 I joined Acorn, which was already the parent of Raisbeck, as Chief Strategy Officer, working across Acorn’s portfolio of companies. In December 2019 I was actually in Seattle, working with Raisbeck Engineering, when the President, Lynn Thomas, was diagnosed with Stage 4 Cancer.

Our Managing Partner at Acorn appointed me as the Interim President while Lynn was being treated. Unfortunately, Lynn passed away in late January 2020, just a few weeks after his diagnosis. The Acorn Board apparently liked what I was doing so after a bit they dropped the ‘Interim’ part of the title!

This was in the middle of the pandemic. I’d been commuting the whole time from Michigan to Seattle. That clearly wasn’t sustainable so my wife and I travelled cross-country over the Memorial Day weekend and arrived in Seattle to become residents here permanently.

AH: Did that mean selling your place back in Michigan?

HC: No, we’ve kept our Michigan home. Initially, we were in a corporate apartment in Seattle, but then we moved into a small condo on the side of Lake Washington. My wife has now officially fallen in love with the Pacific Northwest.

AH: How difficult was it to take over the reins at Raisbeck, with its great engineering history?

HC: Raisbeck is a great company, with a long and storied legacy, and it is peopled by a stellar group of folks who all love this industry. For anyone coming into this company in a leadership position, that is a great team to have around you.

AH: Let’s talk a bit about innovation at Raisbeck, since that’s the company’s lifeblood.

HC: As we all know, Raisbeck has done wonders in developing an outstanding series of products for Learjets and the King Air range. But it also has great STC firsts with the Boeing 727 model in the 1990s, and more recently the Airbus A320s, as well as for other OEM aircraft.

Historically, the development of new product lines would be fairly opportunistic. James or one of the engineers would have an idea, and the company would then do some analysis, both on the technical and the marketing fronts, to see if the idea was technically viable, attractive to owners, and economically feasible. If the analysis held up, they’d launch an STC project and the new idea would be up and running. 

Most aircraft that are developed by OEMs are subject to a design and production timeline, in that the OEM needs to get them out the door, certified, and into the market in a realistic time frame. So if you look at almost any aircraft, as an engineer you will see opportunities to improve them.

From there, it is just a time, dollars and cents calculation, once you determine that there is going to be a real market for an STC product.

AH: How much time are you generally prepared to put into the development of an innovation for a particular model?

HC: The time involved depends very much on the product you are looking at. A new propeller might take six months, a different project could take two years. We will do the preliminary design work and proof of concept to test to see if the benefits and improvements we’re expecting play out in reality. If this works out, you move to the final design stage where you are going from prototype to production and first manufacture. Then there is the testing and the move to getting the official STC.

AH: I take it that Raisbeck is still highly focused on innovation?

HC: Absolutely. When Acorn acquired Raisbeck, part of our thesis was expanding the innovation portfolio to other platforms and models. Extending the portfolio of STCs is high on our agenda. We have implemented a rigorous and formal screening process for ideas and opportunities on this front. Would it give owners a big enough advantage, does it warrant an owner putting money into this aftermarket product, and so on?

This is not an easy task. To come up with real innovations you need a 3D scan of the aircraft and OEMs are not going to hand you their proprietary data. So, we spend probably two years in the background, evaluating configuration after configuration of potential modifications before we get to the one that gives us the best shot.

James was fantastic and very intuitive at spotting these opportunities. But we have a lot of really smart folks who understand engineering and aerodynamics, and who can figure out where the best opportunities lie.

Read the full article here: https://issuu.com/bizavmedia/docs/bam017_spring_2021/26?fr=sMGFhMzI3NzQ1NDc