Timothy Luchini Of Intramotev Exciting Developments In US High Tech Manufacturing Today

An Interview With David Leichner

Start now: x5. Often we talk about “career” from the perspective of experienced professionals who are condensing decades of knowledge into a few — often extraordinary — bullet points. That glosses over the fact that careers are created by showing up every day and getting to work. A traditional employer might expect you to spend 2,040 hours a year on the job — 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks of the year. Successful startups might require much more time. Either way, the most successful careers are built from tens of thousands of hours of effort, invested 60 minutes at a time.

The global shortage of computer chip manufacturing has highlighted the urgency for the US to have a robust High Tech Manufacturing sector. As a result, the Biden administration has signed a bill to boost chip manufacturing in the US. In addition to computer chips, what other exciting advancements and innovations are US companies making in High Tech manufacturing? What is coming out in the near future? What would it take for the US to become a High Tech Manufacturing powerhouse? To address these questions we are talking to leaders of High Tech Manufacturing industries. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Timothy Luchini.

Timothy Luchini, Ph.D. is the CEO of Intramotev, building remote and autonomous battery-electric rail solutions. Intramotev enables packetized cargo, competitive with the speed and flexibility of trucking, while maintaining the many advantages of rail.

Tim has more than 10 years of experience leading teams and developing mobility technologies. Before founding Intramotev, Tim held technical and management roles with the Boeing Company, working on platforms ranging from advanced weapon systems to electric urban air mobility vehicles. Before leaving Boeing, he managed teams of up to 40 engineers and a $15M annual budget, and was responsible for delivering hardware for experimental fixed wing and rotorcraft vehicles. He has numerous technical publications and patents.

Tim earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Michigan State University, a master’s degree from The University of Toledo, and an undergraduate degree from the South Dakota School of Mines. Tim also currently serves as adjunct engineering faculty at Washington University in St. Louis.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started engineering mobility solutions?

My first weeks in college were spent studying Mechanical Engineering in an uncommon setting: on a football field. As a freshman recruited to play on the varsity team, I had to find a balance between the rigors of coursework and athletics. Building bonds between teammates and classmates became crucial to my success and by the end of my first semester I had found an equilibrium that allowed me to perform well both on the field and in the classroom. By the end of my undergraduate career, I was a team captain and all conference performer. During this time, I spent three terms as an intern in the automotive industry gaining experience in research, production, project management and testing. I was constantly relearning how important it was to be a strong individual contributor, to have a good team around you, and do everything with intensity and focus. These lessons led me to graduate school and then to Boeing, where I developed the skills and experience that ultimately led to the founding of Intramotev.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

Intramotev’s origins are a great illustration of the adage that success relies on both who you know “AND” what you know.

I never would have had the opportunity to build this company if I wasn’t developing an expertise in battery-electric vehicles, mobility needs, and building teams around products in an effort to bring them to market. However, I also needed to be connecting with a great set of co-founders looking at the world through a different lens.

In late 2019, I was focused on building and supplying a customer with urban air mobility drones with my team at Boeing. This culminated in some of the largest and most public flight demonstrations in this sector. While I was focused on engineering mobility solutions, one of my closest childhood friends was in business school. He started sending me questions about how to improve the speed and flexibility of rail. My first responses were lazy: “Hey Alex, I am kind of busy building flying cars right now”. He was persistent, though, challenging me to think through how current trends in batteries, autonomy, and aerospace technologies might be applied to rail. Alex explained the size of the rail network; its critical role in the supply chain; and the efficiency gaps in the current system. We talked through how the world is moving to just-in-time delivery of everything: just what you want, when you want it. My team at Boeing was exploring urban cargo drones, while other innovators were building autonomous trucks and developing better delivery services. Amidst all of this invention, the rail industry appeared to be actively moving in the other direction and removing service from their current technology stack.

Alex and I brainstormed ways to build on the strengths of rail and use technology to expand beyond the industry’s current focus on middle-mile operations. In order to develop efficient first and last mile operations we would have to solve latency and dwell challenges in the rail system. Smaller is better when looking at the costs of battery systems, so we brought in Corey, our third co-founder, to explore ways to distribute the work among a platoon of vehicles, each moving under its own power to add much-needed flexibility to the railways.

We incorporated Intramotev just before the pandemic yanked pre-existing global supply chain challenges to the top of our newsfeeds. World-wide attention was suddenly focused on the fragile networks that moved raw materials through manufacturing and onto store shelves. Most of these systems are inflexible, and not easily re-tooled to meet changes in demand. My nieces and nephews could pick up a week’s supply of milk in half-pint boxes from their local school, but their parents couldn’t find gallons at the grocery store. A friend was able to get toilet paper from a local restaurant that was breaking up industrial-size cases and offering individual roles free with take out orders, but the business supply companies weren’t equipped to re-package the toilet paper for average consumers.

Starting a company in the face of global shortages of materials and labor that cascaded into manufacturing disruptions and panic buying was interesting, to say the least. But it also highlighted some of the critical challenges that Intramotev is addressing.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

My dad used to say that “if you had an engineering degree you would understand how the world worked and how you could make it better. If you had a technical Ph.D. no one could tell you what was or wasn’t possible.”

These series of life lessons, instilled early, have impacted my life and how I see the world.

Ok wonderful. Let’s now shift to the main focus of our interview about High Tech Manufacturing. Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now? How do you think this will help people?

I have had the opportunity to work as a global technology scout in the aerospace sector, surveying manufacturing facilities all across North America, Asia, and Europe. In this role I visited state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities considered the “best of the best” in the world and promising a very exciting future for high tech manufacturing.

One area of immense growth and innovation is technology to support flexible, industrial automation. In a sense, our work at Intramotev is to create a massive mobile, automated factory system that brings just-in-time resources to manufacturers and consumers across North America.

Historically, significant breakthroughs in manufacturing, have helped improve working conditions, lower costs, and made more goods accessible to more people. The invention of the assembly line made it possible for the average consumer to afford an automobile, and modern factory robots continue to make everyday products safer to manufacture and more accessible to the public.

In addition to what you are working on, what other exciting advancements and innovations are US companies making in High Tech manufacturing?

The onshoring efforts to bring technology and advanced manufacturing back to North America is an exciting trend, and there are amazing companies that have stood up entire charters around this thesis (Re:Build Mfg). There are reinvestments happening in almost every corner of the US that signal an important shift in focus after decades of offshoring. Alex and I grew up in Ohio and are growing our company in the Midwest, and I’m particularly excited to see other reinvestments in overlooked regions, which have direct impacts on local communities. Groups like Arch Grants, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that attracts and retains entrepreneurs to St. Louis, Missouri through its annual Startup Competition, and others across the country are helping to lead these investments.

From your vantage point as an insider, what exciting developments will be coming out in the near future?

Be watching for a revitalization of rail offering 1/5th of the cost of trucking and 9.35x less greenhouse gas emissions per ton of material moved when compared to trucking.

What are the three things that most excite you about the state of US High Tech Manufacturing? Why?

1. The US manufacturing industry reinvents itself dynamically. It is remarkable to see how the best-in-class manufacturing facilities can be a brownfield facility that has made over 100 years of continuous improvement. It can also be a greenfield site that starts with a clean sheet. Both make unique contributions to creating best in class products in an efficient and reliable manner.
2. There is another reinvention happening today with our logistics systems. Rail, trucking, and aerospace are all experimenting with electrification and autonomy in an effort to be socially and environmentally responsible. Rail is one of those spaces that has consistent advantages because of its 200+ year heritage. The very things that are in place because rail is a backbone of the US economy (rights of way, energy efficiency and scale) are the same things that will entrench it for the next 200 years as it adopts technological advancements. Things like electrification have advantages in rail because of its legacy and efficiencies that can be gained on that heritage. Ultimately, reinventing rail today.
3. As we look at a reinvention of logistics there is a new opportunity for further reginal reinvestment in manufacturing jobs.

What concerns you about US High Tech Manufacturing? What would you suggest needs to be done to address those concerns?

Historically, doing business has been viewed as something separate from the environment that we live in. The last hundred years has shown that manufacturing must be balanced within the environment it operates. When the connection between the factories and the planet is forgotten we have repeatedly seen negative consequences. This is continuing to be a focus for many manufacturing businesses. They are finding ways to be environmentally conscience while continuing to operate in a business forward mindset.

Based on your opinion or experience, what would it take for the US to become a High Tech Manufacturing powerhouse?

The US has been a High Tech manufacturing powerhouse for generations, but our competition has changed and we have to adapt to the growth of Asian markets and the recovery of European manufacturing. The US has talented innovators working in all industries and scales. One of the largest manufacturers in the world builds the biggest airplanes in the biggest factories in the Puget Sound, while there’s a guy sitting in a shed in an overlooked corner of Illinois who manufactures the highest technology lenses for satellites. Whether it’s a team of 100k or just 1, the US has an incredible workforce making unique contributions every day in High Tech Manufacturing. We have to leverage that talent, continue to innovate, and bring new technologies to market. Companies like Intramotev are fostering a competition of ideas that can enhance — and sometimes upend — established approaches and keep the US a successful hub for technical innovation in all industries.

As you know, there are not that many underrepresented groups in High Tech Manufacturing. Can you advise what is needed to engage them in these industries?

As an engineering educator, I have learned that the best way to get people excited about the “work” behind technology is to talk about the end applications first. It’s a lot easier to engage with the math and science when you’re trying to figure out how to build fighter jets, flying cars, or virtual reality simulators. Traditional approaches to education start with abstract concepts like “imaginary numbers” without ever talking about why someone might want to know how to use them. Learning how to use a tool like imaginary numbers is much more interesting when you have to solve a problem like: “design an airplane wing that has to survive 300 million Volts from a lightning bolt, when flying through a cloud, filled with jet fuel, and the tolerance is 0 failures.” You gain a new appreciation for the group of engineers that figured out how to design planes so well that pilots can calmly announce that they “expect some weather up ahead” and then fly safely through stormy skies. It still takes a lot of work to understand the math and science, of course, but the learning process certainly becomes much more interesting. To recruit and retain a more diverse STEM workforce, we have to help students understand how their efforts in the classroom can ultimately help improve the lives of people they care about.

Fantastic. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Career In High Tech Manufacturing?

Start now: x5. Often we talk about “career” from the perspective of experienced professionals who are condensing decades of knowledge into a few — often extraordinary — bullet points. That glosses over the fact that careers are created by showing up every day and getting to work. A traditional employer might expect you to spend 2,040 hours a year on the job — 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 50 weeks of the year. Successful startups might require much more time. Either way, the most successful careers are built from tens of thousands of hours of effort, invested 60 minutes at a time.

When I first started at Boeing, we had a bimodal split in our population: the people who could retire any day, and people who were just starting careers. Many of my mentors started in the defense industry during the Cold War and told stories of what it was like to pump out 4,000 F-4 phantom fighter jets from one building while building Harriers next door. They were landing reusable Delta Clipper rockets upright in the early 90s, before it was cool. They built an F-15 with paper drawings and manual calculations that was safe and robust enough to land with just one wing. I got to sift through a colleague’s pencil sketches and notes as he patiently described one of his first tasks as a new engineer: inventing a wing for a first-in-its class cruise missile.

Then I got back to work as the new engineer working a small project for the F-18. One day at a time, I built an anti-weapons platform, led a DARPA program, built flying cars, and package delivery drones. Now my days are spent reinventing the way people think about rail (and I have earned some pretty cool bullet points, too!)

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I would like to change the education system to encourage established tech companies to hire the best students directly out of high school. Companies benefit by addressing labor shortages and the tech gap, while students can start contributing immediately and gain practical experience with the skills they learn in the classroom. The engineering program where I teach in St. Louis caters to non-traditional students by offering night classes, and many of the students work 20–40 hours a week in the field they are studying. I think expanding these types of hybrid college-corporate experiences would help retain bright students in engineering programs and strengthen the pipeline of talent for High Tech Manufacturing.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Intramotev.com

LinkedIn — Intramotev

This was very inspiring and informative. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this interview!

About The Interviewer: David Leichner is a veteran of the Israeli high-tech industry with significant experience in the areas of cyber and security, enterprise software and communications. At Cybellum, a leading provider of Product Security Lifecycle Management, David is responsible for creating and executing the marketing strategy and managing the global marketing team that forms the foundation for Cybellum’s product and market penetration. Prior to Cybellum, David was CMO at SQream and VP Sales and Marketing at endpoint protection vendor, Cynet. David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Jerusalem Technology College. He holds a BA in Information Systems Management and an MBA in International Business from the City University of New York.