It’s an exciting time for Aerospace Industry in Southern California! Recently designated as one of the first federally designated regions in the nationwide Investing in Manufacturing Communities Partnership (IMCP), SoCal is one of only a handful of aerospace-focused districts in the country that carries the advantage of preference to $1.3 billion in federal funding.

The Advanced Manufacturing Partnership for Southern California (AMP SoCal) is a collaboration that unites government, academia and industry toward the common goal of strengthening the industrial ecosystem throughout Southern California for Aerospace and Defense (A&D) manufacturers and their supply chain. AMPS SoCal represents the southern 10 counties of California that hold the IMCP designation and leverages the combined knowledge, innovation and political support of its member companies (from both the public and private sector) to accomplish its goals of supporting the A&D community.

KickStage Consulting Inc. was honored to attend the AMP SoCal bi-annual meeting on March 9th at the California Science Center in Los Angeles and learn about all the great federal initiatives in place right on our doorstep to encourage innovation and technology development. Two days prior, the team also attended the NASA Women-Owned Small Business  industry day and learnt of the struggles that large federal agencies in the Southern California region are having in meeting their quotas for placing contracts with small, women-owned and disadvantaged businesses.

This means that Southern California is currently one of the most favorable environments in the world within which to launch and develop a small business, particularly in the area of space and defense.

However, as General Petraeus, keynote speaker at the AMP SoCal meeting, quoted: ‘politicians cannot bring back old-fashioned factory jobs – they don’t make ’em like that anymore’. It is more important than ever to leverage new technologies and manufacturing capabilities to achieve and maintain a competitive edge!

Five leaders of the KickStage Consulting team have just completed an intensive 7-month delivery recovery contract with Zodiac Aerospace lavatories, supporting Airbus’s 2016 A350 delivery targets.

Deployed across the US, Mexico and France at critical strategic suppliers, our senior consultants used data-driven problem solving methodologies and analytics to determine root cause of delivery short-falls and implement rapid improvement projects.

A wide array of root causes surfaced preventing on-time, on-quality deliveries of the aircraft lavatories, from material shortages and design flaws to MRP and planning immaturity. Our consultants drove fast-acting, systemic changes and put in place solid management frameworks to allow the Zodiac team to sustain these improvements in 2017 and beyond.

The team were recognized as a ‘Proud Partner with Airbus’ and look forward to further supporting the A350 supply chain in 2017.

The Zonta Club of Newport Harbor Foundation is screening the 8th Annual LUNAFEST Film Festival at Chapman University in Orange, California, on Saturday, February 4, 2017. Zonta is an international organization dedicated to empowering women through service and advocacy worldwide.

LUNAFEST is the only film festival in the U.S. that combines women-only filmmakers with a community fundraising campaign. It raises awareness and contributions for the Breast Cancer Fund and for hundreds of community based organizations throughout the country.

Fifteen percent of the LUNAFEST Film Festival’s net proceeds go directly to breast cancer research through the Breast Cancer Fund. The balance goes toward the Zonta Award to assist a female student at Chapman University Dodge College of Film & Media Arts. The funds will assist her in advancing her career in the film industry, a field traditionally dominated by men. This award will assist in supporting the cost of her grad thesis or senior film project and film festival expenses.

KickStage Consulting Inc. is proud to be a Director Sponsor for this event. Please join KickStage in supporting such a great cause!

www.lunafest.org/orange0204

KickStage Consulting are honored to sponsor and support Youth Employment Service in Orange County.

The mission of Youth Employment Service of the Harbor Area (YES) is to teach youth and young adults ages 16-24 the skills needed to secure and maintain meaningful employment, and to offer programs that help young adults improve their employability, career choices and quality of life.

Helping youth find and keep a job is what YES is all about. YES is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that envisions a community in which youth and young adults achieve economic independence, obtain personal self-sufficiency and lead fulfilling lives.

Founded in 1970, YES was initiated by community leaders who believed that early employment is critical to the positive development of young adults. As visionaries, their observations were made before the idea of formal work-related programming for teens became widespread. That initial vision is now supported by extensive research on youth development and employment. For over 45 years, YES has served as a bridge between young adults seeking employment and the business community seeking capable and enthusiastic young employees. We provide our comprehensive employment services out of our site in Costa Mesa–which we own and where we have been located for 20 years–and reach additional youth through presentations at high schools and youth-serving organizations throughout Orange County.

To find our more about YES, please visit YESWORKS.org 

There are over 15,000 people homeless in Orange County, CA at any one time. KickStage Consulting Inc. are delighted to serve as annual Shelter Sponsors for Colette’s Children’s Home, a shelter and transitional housing provider to hundreds of homeless women and children in Orange County. This sponsorship provides a full month of housing and services to 4 women and their children.

To find out more or to become a sponsor, please visit ColettesChildrensHome.com

Once viewed as a parallel endeavor in order to satisfy a minority of environmentally concerned customers, sustainability is now a key element of core business operations.

Ignoring sustainability today would lead to certain business failure in any industry. Not only is the world increasingly conscious of man-made environmental decay, but businesses are also starting to realize that a focus on sustainability is paramount to maintaining long-term business continuity, price control and risk management. The rise of new world super powers, such as China and India, has intensified competition for limited natural resources; there is increasing legislation over carbon dioxide emissions and water usage and, simply, consumers are placing higher importance on sustainability in their personal consumption choices. These are just some of the reasons that have pushed sustainability in front of the corporate looking glass, and why the number of Chief Sustainability Officers appointed to the Fortune 500 C-Suites is doubling year-on-year.

Where does Corporate Social Responsibility fit in?

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to a business’s program of assessing and responding to the affect of their operation on environmental and social wellbeing (over and above what is required by law). CSR is taking the same journey into business prominence as the sustainability field (indeed, from the environmental perspective, there is a lot of overlap between the two fields), but is encountering much more resistance in making it to the forefront of business leaders attention.

Events such as the 2013 structural failure of an eight-story garment factory, the Savar building, in Dhaka, Bangladesh that killed over 1,100 people, highlight for many the enormous ethical business gaps that CSR seeks to address. The factory, producing clothes for commonplace American stores such as Walmart, The Children’s Place and Benetton, paid workers $30 per month. Unsafe, overcrowded conditions and a lack of any discernable health and safety protocol made it impossible for many to safely evacuate when the building began to collapse, and warnings made the day before after cracks appeared were ignored by foremen and workers afraid at the threat of lost wages.

Despite the exposure and public outcry at the time, three years later a study by NYU’s Stern Center for Business and Human Rights reports an alarming lack of progress towards any substantive change. Despite commitments from both major multinational companies and governmental agencies to tighten legislation and safety protocol, out of 3,425 inspections of Bangladeshi factories undertaken by the study in December 2015, only 8 have remedied violations enough to pass an inspection to new standards created after the disaster. The same inertia is seen all around the world despite the continuing exposure of human rights violations in major multinational supply chains.

The extent of these failings is both facilitated by and hidden by a massive extent of sub-contracting. Not only does this practice allow a large degree of sourcing to remain under the legislative radar (retaining illegal working conditions for cheaper production), but also it permits major brands to escape direct blame by turning it towards their direct contractors.

With no company wishing to be ‘first-past-the-post’ in a major CSR overhaul of their supply chain that would lose the price competitiveness facilitated by unethical practice, this latest stagnation demonstrates that change has to be driven at the legislative and compliance level, and by increased consumer scrutiny. With an absence of tight, compulsory legislation that protects workers at all levels of a supply chain, the vast majority simply will avoid compliance until major reform is introduced at the national government and international body level (such as through the UN and World Trade Organization).

KickStage Consulting is thrilled to be announced as the latest industry exhibitor at Space Tech Expo 2016 in Pasadena! Space Tech Expo & Conference is the West Coast’s premier B2B space event for spacecraft, satellite, launch vehicle and space-related technologies.

The show brings together industry leaders, decision-makers, specifiers and buyers to meet manufacturers and the supply chain for civil and commercial space.

To join the KickStage team, or for more information, please visit www.spacetechexpo.com 

FEBRUARY 2016

The KickStage team is thrilled for the opportunity to exhibit at the 2016 Industry Expo at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Port Hueneme! We look forward to exploring with our industrial partners and Naval Command how we can support and optimize their operation.

Join us March 24th 2016 – IndustryExpo.CiKeys/com