From Toronto’s Factory Floors to Orbit with Mike Greenley

Ontario’s advanced manufacturing sector is skyrocketing, with $50 billion in investments driving innovation in EVs, green steel, and aerospace. MDA Space CEO Mike Greenley discusses how technologies like robotics, 3D printing, and augmented reality are reshaping manufacturing—and how these advancements are paving the way for a new industrial frontier in space.

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From the Toronto Region Board of Trade, this is Toronto Talks. Toronto, let's talk advanced manufacturing. How true is it that we're still a manufacturing powerhouse? We are seeing job-creating investments in every single part of our province. I think that we have to pay attention and look at policies and systems to help industries scale. Following decades of decline, Ontario's advanced manufacturing sector is on the rebound. There's over $50 billion in investments in EVs, battery plants, green steel and aerospace. But there's so much more potential for growth. We can build an ecosystem to support a robust manufacturing sector. One that will include logistics, technology development, clean energy and finance. To understand how we get there, the board's Senior Vice President of Communications and Marketing, Jennifer Vandervoak, sits down with the CEO of NDA Space Incorporated, Mike Greenlee. Mike also sits on the executive table of the board's Business Council of Toronto. Here's their conversation. Why don't we start with a bit of an introduction, introduce yourself, and tell us a little bit about how did you find yourself in the role that you sit today? So I'm Mike Greenlee. I'm the CEO of MDA Space. MDA Space is Canada's space company. We build satellites that observe the Earth. We build satellites to build communication networks in space. And we build robotic systems. The Canadarm was used on the space shuttle and space stations and all kinds of future applications to come. I've been in this job for almost seven years. Perfect. I came from previous position as a sector president in the defense industry. And then before that, various vice president roles in the defense industry. I worked in all the nuclear power plants in Ontario and in the defense sector for a lot of my career. I had my own company for about eight years that I grew up. It was a Profit 100 company, one of the fastest growing companies in Canada, three years in a row. And eventually I sold it to CAE in Montreal in 2005 and became a vice president there and started the last 20 years as a corporate vice president, president, and now CEO of publicly traded companies. So mainly in aerospace and defense, and then the last seven years here in space. That's amazing. That's quite the journey. And so given where you are working in space and the technology that you're implementing, let's talk a little bit about this concept of innovation, which really means so many things to so many people. But we're talking about this idea of Manufacturing 4.0. And you said that you sit on one of the top 100 R&D firms in Canada earlier today. And so what does Manufacturing 4.0 mean to you and to MDA? Increasing levels of automation and efficiency. So for us, we've gone through a transition, especially in our satellite manufacturing. We've introduced additive manufacturing. So a tremendous reduction in the number of parts, increased use of 3D printing, increased use of new materials, and then advanced manufacturing, which for us has been the introduction of robotics for assembly, integration, and test of components for satellites. That is now continuing to get further automated as we get into high volume manufacturing. Now we're doubling the size of our satellite production facilities. We're introducing high volume assembly lines whereby satellites will move through a production line process. You get assembled at a constant drumbeat of activity on a daily basis. And then with that will become a very high level of instrumentation of the manufacturing process. So we're using all instrumented tooling and barcodes, scanning everything for all elements of the manufacturing process, including the introduction of augmented reality data tables, whereby an assembler projected onto the table would be all the instructions and then the diagrams and connected like this, and then put this thing here. So you're following all your instructions digitally with an augmented reality, the table, for example. So every little step is digitized, automated, and tracked, which creates huge data lakes of data in the manufacturing process, which will then create the foundation for a next generation of much more use of business intelligence tools, artificial intelligence to analyze that data and continually be able to continually improve that process moving forward. I mean, it sounds like Star Trek. I mean, this idea of augmented reality and having your workers be able to follow something like that, which will certainly ease and help you to get to that level of delivery that you're looking at. And as CEO, you must be really invested in that sort of innovation. Do you ever have trouble selling these concepts upward to your board or to your employees? No, honestly, a lot of this stuff comes from sort of the middle level of the organization. They can see what they can do with automation in the engineering, design, and manufacturing process. They spend a lot of time studying competitors, what they're doing. They've brought in teams of, I guess, consultants and experts that have worked in other high-volume manufacturing environments for similar size objects with similar size complexity. So, for example, creating a satellite would not be the complexity or number of parts of assembling an automobile. Right. Like a smaller size object with less parts. And so, yeah, we spent years, actually, the teams have spent years working on that. In addition, it's been a very incremental process. We've increased volumes on satellite production gradually over an eight or nine year period. And with each new step, each new generation of larger order with higher volume, more additive manufacturing, more advanced manufacturing has been introduced with each step of the way to now we're doing the whole thing. So that, I mean, that's really innovation from the inside out. And that's led to that growth and that productivity. It's incredible. So we talked a little bit about some of the obstacles, but it sounds like the will is there and the desire to innovate is there, which is amazing. But tell me a little bit about partnerships. I mean, no industry operates in isolation. Are there partnerships, collaborations across the sector with other tech companies, with research institutions, or even government that has really helped you move the needle in advancing your organization and your sector? Yeah. Everybody has to work together on this stuff. So as we have introduced, for example, more out of manufacturing 3D printing, for example, we made a decision. We will do that ourselves and have acquired the equipment to allow us to do that for prototypes. If we want to be able to do 3D printing, test the prototype, see how it all clicks together and then say, okay, nope, we want to change that, another 3D print, check that, be able to do that quickly. So you can iterate, fail fast, all that stuff. But then it's, okay, this works. Now we want to produce flight model equipment that's going to go into space. We work with partners who are experts in production, 3D printing for complex adionic systems, aviation systems, or in our case, space systems. And so the partnerships in the supply chain for the type of technology, such as that example, has been very important. Another thing that's become very important is that we've moved from orders and satellites from, you know, three, two and a half years ago, our biggest order was for 17 satellites with an option for nine more. Then last summer we got an order for 200 satellites. Wow. So a lot of our customers are, the space industry is dramatically changing. And so more and more people are putting up constellations, which is hundreds of satellites that follow the same orbital paths that are all working together as a constellation in space. And so with that, then our supply chain who was supplying us to build one satellite or three or seven or 17, now we went and talked to them about 200. And so if they sold us four things for each satellite, now they're going to order for 800 things. And so that's quite the shock depending on the size of your company. And as the space sector has been transitioned, people have to transition with us. And so the partnership there, it's to not just evaluate a supplier and team with them in terms of assuring you've got good quality, proven space chops, a good price, but can you scale with this? Because the first order of 200 satellites is the first of many. If I'm producing two satellites a day, that means in a five-year block, I can build 2,000 satellites. So that's quite a different situation than what people have been used to in the past. And so working much closer together to be able to do that. In being able to invest in this level of technology, to be able to compete at this level, we're legit world leading in building digital satellites in our class of satellite that we focus on. We have to obviously invest to be able to do that. We will partner with provincial and federal governments to be able to get some support to be able to do that. And as a result sometimes of that support, such as our satellite manufacturing facility that we have in Quebec, we've gotten some support and we're partnering to build a satellite manufacturing ecosystem, but in exchange for us getting our support, we've promised to create or convert companies in the Quebec ecosystem into space companies. So you're working together as a community to be able to build an ecosystem that can scale up together with advanced manufacturing. So it really is partnership across the whole ecosystem, working with government to help expand industry, innovation and growth and scale, but then also working throughout your entire supply chain to make sure that they can keep up with that accelerated growth that you've been able to put in place. For us, because we sell space systems, we are sold to companies and countries. At the federal level, we need Canada to buy our space systems. Like we build the Canva and Canada buys it. We build radar satellites for observing the earth, Canada buys them. And so you need your country as an anchor customer as well so that other countries can see that your country believes in you. So that leads us perfectly into my next question, which was going to be a little bit about policy. And policy inevitably shapes innovation and it shapes where a sector is going. So are there any specific legislative areas or regulatory changes that are needed in the landscape that could just help to propel you to where you need to go? Is there something missing or is there something that from an advocacy perspective we should really be trying to pursue? There are a number of regulatory things that we need with, you know, Transport Canada, for example, gives the, and the government of Canada gives you your various regulatory permits to operate in space. Every country does that. So space is a very highly moving, expanding market. And so there are things that we will be developing and selling and launching and operating in space that Canada doesn't even know how to give us permission to do that. So we have to like have the government keep up with the competitive dynamics internationally so that we can build and operate the things that that are coming quickly into the future. I think that the, you know, the systems such as our income tax credit system in Canada, I think that's a very important system. I think that helps companies scale up. It helps encourage companies to invest in hard to solve problems in Canada. And it creates some financial incentives for doing so in Canada. I think that as we talk about productivity in Canada. There's a difference between being a satellite office of a foreign-owned company or being a head office. Absolutely. So head offices will typically invest more. We don't have any systems or structures in Canada for encouraging the creation, retainment, or moving of a head office to Canada. And so I think that's a whole area of policy development that we could pay attention to. Right now, I would like us to study more, Is that true on Canadian head offices versus subsidiaries of foreign-owned companies? Because I think that's going to be a difference. I don't hear people talking in the United States that there's a shortage of investment, but I also don't hear people talking in the United States about a continual decline of head offices in the United States. That's not a topic. So I think that we have to pay attention and look at policies and systems to help industries scale and then encourage them to keep their head office here and or attract other head offices here because that's where your main corporate decision brain is. That's where your investment decision brain is. So, I mean, we've talked a lot about innovation and technology and how that is enhancing productivity and growth and scale, but it's also really about people. So can you tell me a little bit about how MDA is investing to ensure that your current workforce is really keeping up with and prepared for the challenges ahead? For sure. We're hiring a lot of people to start with. Space people are very highly skilled. So a lot of engineers, a lot of high quality talent that we have to engage in and work with. These days, we're working a number of things. We have a compensation framework to make sure that we're competitive in our compensation. We have very strong benefits programs in terms of the whole life experience of an employee. We have hybrid work environments to keep up with people's expectations in that regard. And now we're starting to expand our sort of on-purpose development programs to be aligned with where we're going as a business. We also have this shift we have to manage whereby we've been around and been a certain, we've been around 55 years in Canada. The last couple of decades have been pretty steady in space. And now in the last eight years, it's like, boom, it's taken home. We're going through all this growth. So we're bringing in hundreds, little thousands of new people. And then we've got maybe a thousand people that have been around for, you know, on average 25 years. Knowledge transfer is a huge thing. So having on purpose understanding of where are, where is your key knowledge about space and our systems in the business? Um, what is my retirement risk on the other side of that curve? What development programs and succession plans do I need for all those people? So the whole on-purpose development and transfer and management of corporate knowledge is in the early days of becoming an on-purpose thing. And we have a lot of room we have to grow there in the next three to five years. A lot of intention there. So we really want our listeners to step away with learning something new, something that they didn't know before. And so thinking about, it sounds like there's a lot of end-to-end investment in that workforce that you have and that you're growing. But if you were to, you know, run into the future workforce, the young talent that hasn't decided what their career is going to be yet, but has to be part of this plan that you're putting together, what would be your elevator pitch to tell the next generation about what a career would look like at MDA, but also the manufacturing sector overall? Yeah. So I would talk about, I always talk about space to start with. So people, the average lay person has viewed space as, we went to the moon in the 1960s, 1970s, and then we didn't do much for a bunch of years. We had a space shuttle program and then some things went away. Right now there is a persistent economy in space. So it's a globally, a $600 billion a year business transitioning to $1.8 trillion a year, 10 years from now, and then it'll just keep going from there. So a very, very persistent, safe and secure economic area, but super high tech. Well, if they want legitimate world leaders in Canada was the third country to put a satellite into space, we have a legitimate 50, 60 year history in delivering in space. If people come and work for us and work in our advanced technology and advanced manufacturing environments, what they work on is going to go into orbit. We've been involved in over 450 missions and our technology has been successful every time. And that volume is only going to increase as we go forward. We're going to have the unique experience in our business of working with and on advanced manufacturing technologies here on earth for space robotics and advanced digital satellites. But then our proximity operation sensors, which is something you do in space and robotics for space are going to get involved in on-orbit manufacturing. So we're actually starting to get involved in That's cool. Manufacturing in zero gravity. Wow. Because the chemical reactions and material reactions and human cellular growth reactions that can be created in zero gravity are very different than on Earth. So we're going to end up with on-orbit industrial parks doing zero gravity manufacturing environments, and we will be front and center and involved in designing and building knowledge. So what we learn and come up with in advanced manufacturing on Earth, we will be transitioning through our robotics and space operation businesses into orbit. Well, Mike, thank you so much for taking the time to sit and talk with us. This was fantastic and we hope to talk to you again soon. Thank you. To learn more about the work Mike is doing on the Business Council of Toronto, check out our website by visiting bot.com. Thanks for listening to Toronto Talks. Make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And don't forget to keep talking Toronto. Our voice drives meaningful change.