Those best adapted to particular conditions will succeed in the long run. This idea was invented by Herbert Spencer in Principles of Biology (University Press of the Pacific, 2002) to describe Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection of living species.

By the early 1900s, this insight was being transferred to other areas and continues to be valid today as we witness events in the current global economic crises. It’s interesting that 2009 is the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s treatise on the Origin of Species (Oxford University Press, 2008), which reflects our ability to adapt to the challenges of change. We see that it applies to how living beings adapt to change, as well as to organizations, whose ability to survive depends on the ability to adapt to the changing economic and social environment. Organizations that are able to adapt to change, generate alternative avenues of revenue, discover new markets, and learn from other industries, make the leap to survival. They look for ways to remodel their business and come out stronger. As the rest of this article indicates, commercial and manufacturing companies can also position themselves for natural selection by their customers.

At a recent conference of suppliers to the aerospace industry, one presenter stated that despite being a newcomer to the aerospace industry, he had picked up business worth $10 million over the last year and expected to grow an additional $40 million this year. Almost everyone present (mostly CEOs) stared at him in shock. He went on to naïvely inquire what was so important about Wichita (the hub for major aerospace customers) and why he should attend the industry conference there. What was so shocking was that he had been in the automotive business and with the economic downturn and its effect on this industry, the automotive suppliers were looking to the aerospace industry for new revenues. As an automotive supplier, he seemed to have found his adjacency.

Writing in Aerospace Manufacturing and Design, Alexander Craig, managing director of BKK Ltd. states, “Examination of automotive supplier manufacturing capabilities, technologies, and capital equipment makes it clear that many automotive suppliers may be ideally suited for aerospace applications. Technical manufacturing processes, tolerances, and quality required for existing automotive suppliers meet and exceed existing aerospace manufacturing requirements.”

They have the capability, the capacity, the skills, and they have been honing these over the past several decades, thanks to the competitive Japanese auto industry. Per Crain’s Detroit Business News, “For the automotive suppliers, the $209 billion aerospace industry, which is anticipating growth of 8-10 percent over the next 10 years, is a potential life preserver.” It is also a huge threat to the small aerospace suppliers who, in the past, have enjoyed cost-plus billing and are now suddenly facing the woes of economic downturn and increased competitive pressures.

Automotive suppliers, on the other hand, have long been practicing lean methodologies and delivering just-in-time services to their customers. They have been required to follow practices that establish confidence in component suppliers and their production processes. These include the following:

• Production Part Approval Process (PPAP) establishes confidence that “all customer engineering design record and specification requirements are properly understood by the supplier and that the process has the potential to produce product consistently meeting these requirements during an actual production run at the quoted production rate”
• Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) provides a framework of procedures and techniques to develop products. This is a system that’s superior to any defined for the aerospace suppliers.

Although possible, it will not be easy for automotive suppliers to become qualified sources for aerospace; they will need to implement process and information systems improvements required for traceability and FAA and/or EASA certification.

Interestingly, many in the aerospace industry are beginning to adopt lean practices and may sometimes feel smug after a few kaizen events. Considering that even Toyota--the originator of the Toyota Production System--feels that it is only about 50-55 percent of the way there, there’s still a lot of opportunity for us to build on our strengths.

Another industry that has been affected is shipbuilding. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, is the U.S. center for Naval Architecture. Last year, a group of students went to Korea for an internship in ship design and shipbuilding at Hyundai and were amazed to see that it churns out a ship every four days. What happened to this country’s agility? Looking at our capabilities, we need to explore opportunities beyond our traditional fields if we are to sustain our organizational viability. Are you positioning yourself for natural selection?