After an influential history within the manufacturing industry as VP and CTO of the Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT), and a former (2020-2021) ASME Congressional Fellow in manufacturing, Tim Shinbara maintains a high level of modesty, and insists it is his teams that make him look successful. During his 11-year tenure at AMT, he raised the level of dialogue and engagement within the U.S. and international community regarding manufacturing technology and its supply chain. These engagements shed light on U.S. builders and distributors, raising the importance of manufacturing technology and its critical role in production. No showcase was more impressive than IMTS (International Manufacturing Technology Show) across those years.
In January 2024, Shinbara moved to BlueForge Alliance (BFA) as Chief Strategy Officer, a role with even bigger implications for the industry as a whole—solving defense supply chain and workforce challenges, and galvanizing and uplifting the defense industrial base.
Tim Shinbara, BlueForge Alliance
Co-founded by Kiley Wren and Rob Gorham in 2022, BFA is a nonprofit, mission-driven organization. Its focus is on accelerating the revitalization of the defense industrial base through non-traditional approaches that deliver speed, access, and scale. The organization is widely known for its workforce partnerships in recruitment and training, such as with the U.S. Navy’s AM Center of Excellence and ATDM (Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing) located in Danville, VA. But its mandate is far broader than just these projects, as it deals with an intimidating mission to support and rebuild the U.S. Navy’s Maritime Industrial Base, which includes submarines and ships.
“We are here to revitalize, galvanize, and modernize the MIB through non-traditional approaches that deliver speed, access and scale,” said Shinbara. “Our suppliers are some of the best in the world who have a near-impossible task in front of them, this is where BFA is positioned to help. We do this through new and creative methodologies to improve and leverage advanced technology including additive manufacturing, strengthen supply chains, and rebuild workforce development.”
As part of that mandate, you may have seen the BuildSubmarines.com advertising and NASCAR sponsorship, recruiting potential workers for training in welding, machining, AM, non-destructive testing, and more. What you don’t see as easily is the work being done within the 16,000 small- and medium-sized manufacturers in the maritime industrial base, the growing Alliance partnership model, the help and assistance with DoD contracts, the transition-to-implementation efforts underway to accelerate the supply chain, and more.
“The work we have been doing in the qualification and certification process says a lot about our work here at BFA,” said Shinbara. “With our partners, we are working to reduce the time for part qualifications from about five-to-seven years down to about two. It’s phenomenal to see.”
Image courtesy of BlueForge Alliance
Shinbara believes that manufacturing technology urgently needs to become more accessible, and more integrated into production, to meet the scale needed by the Navy. Focusing on innovation in automation, robotics, advanced non-destructive testing (NDT), digital engineering, and AI are top of the list. When asked about production impacts, Shinbara stated, “the speed of transition of such technologies accelerates ‘opening the faucet’ but the material improvements are, admittedly, further downstream; making the impact of today’s investments that much more critical.”
“With additive manufacturing, we are looking at material and build process specifications to target material interchangeability to legacy production techniques for critical materials and components,” he continued. “Automation is a catalyst to drive greater efficiency for the worker. Worker efficiency through automation is key to increasing first-time quality on the front end of production. On the back end, we have also identified automative processes for material quality inspection that reduces the man hours needed to inspect components for defects and act on those issues if defects exist.”
BFA operates as a neutral partner for the Navy and major shipbuilders, bringing together tech developers and automation experts who are looking to apply their innovations to the shipbuilding industry.
“There are manufacturing innovations happening every day, many SMBs that can help the Navy achieve their goal in revitalizing the shipbuilding industry,” said Shinbara. “That is why we are here and why we need to enable these discussions to promote where advancements can have the most impact.”
The Navy has a number of urgent and massive needs. Firstly, it estimates a skilled trade hiring demand of more than 140,000 workers over the next ten years across its industrial base of shipyards and suppliers, just to support new construction submarine shipbuilding.
“Even a great workforce training program is still restricted by space, size, and seats, so we are making strategic partnerships with multiple organizations, counties, and communities across the country to try and achieve this massive goal,” said Shinbara. “And the focus is having a positive impact, although we still have a long way to go to meet the labor demand target.”
Indeed, results so far include:
- Accelerated training cohorts launching as part of the Michigan Maritime Manufacturing (M3) initiative that will result in 250 welders and machinists annually for suppliers throughout Michigan.
- During FY24, Southeastern New England Defense Industry Alliance (SENEDIA) achieved and exceeded their “5,000 trained” milestone.
- Virginia Regional Maritime Training System investments for skilled trades training will increase throughput of trained individuals by more than 1,800 over the next year.
- In 2024, the ATDM program graduated, trained, and certified craftsmen with the skills needed to contribute immediately. Since its inception in 2021, ATDM has graduated more than 614 diverse students from nearly 30 states.
BFA operates BuildSubmarines.com, which acts as a hub for recruiting and training the skilled workforce, as well as connecting trainees with thousands of job opportunities in the maritime industrial base.
“Of those seeking immediate careers from ATDM training programs, 77 percent have been placed in the maritime and broader defense industrial base,” said Shinbara.
One of the most fundamental challenges to the role of BFA—and another critical mandate from the Navy—that occupies Shinbara’s thoughts is how to quickly revitalize an industry that has dwindled across decades to the state it is in now.
“Our work is to take a broad, thoughtful, holistic approach rather than a ‘dart board with a shotgun’ mentality – and we all have to have a ‘bringing it back’ mindset,” said Shinbara. “We have to scale nationally, and to do that we have to understand how that happens, and then catalyze locally.”
The organization currently has more than 400 projects underway, with even more planned in the future. Along the way, BFA is working to deliver business sustainability for all participants. The long-term strategy must be a focus, with roadmaps, accountability, and the support to accomplish their mission.
“When you get people in a room with the same, appropriate mission statement, it creates belonging; which is one of our core values,” said Shinbara. “We always say we are a ‘Partner First’ organization. Our partners need shared infrastructure, need to be able to benefit from economies of scale, they need us to focus on problems that used to be everyone’s problems and therefore no one’s problem. So, they would never be fixed. As we fix them, we will see rapid improvements in on-time delivery of parts, available workforce to use them, and so on.”
It seems that progress is definitely being made. BFA’s impact as of March 2025 is as follows:
- 2.5x increase in supply base production
- 50% reduction in acquisition cycle time
- 28% increase in delivery of sequence critical materials
- 900+ reduced days of delay cumulatively by additively manufacturing parts
- 2 billion media impressions from the BuildSubmarines.com marketing campaigns
- 2.6 million ‘apply’ clicks from candidates to job listings on the BuildSubmarines.com Career Portal
- 25K+ students engaged through outreach and workforce activities in 30 states within a 1-year timeframe
- 200% increase in annual hiring gains between 2021 and 2024
“The 900-plus reduced days of delay for submarine parts hits me hard,” said Shinbara. “A reduction of 900 days in production scheduling means an additional 900 days of float, and opportunities for further production schedule optimization. It’s impactful and AM is showing its worth.”
BFA is also focused on making its own improvements to the public-private partnership model by learning from the past and existing models, and adapting accordingly.
“I often think about why other efforts conclude, why organizations disband. Often with public-private partnerships, you’ll sometimes see things being done well in compartments, or in a short amount of time, but then they stop” he said. “And why do the ones that succeed do so exponentially better? BFA is working on a new evolution of public-private partnership organizations: We are learning by cherry-picking the successes of other efforts and improving in areas left lacking such as not having national-to-local coordination, and not informing and convening around a unifying message and mission. Once you address these kinds of things, it becomes a real community.”
Companies or educational institutions interested in becoming part of the mission should visit the BlueForge Alliance website. Individuals looking for skills training and career opportunities within the maritime industrial base should visit BuildSubmarines.com.
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