Meet John Barnes, Founder and Managing Director of The Barnes Global Advisors. Learn why he chose manufacturing and how he makes a difference in additive manufacturing. How did you get into Manufacturing? It honestly started in grad school. My advisor had two projects, one being more theoretical and the other involved building a furnace and making something. I felt that I needed to apply what I was learning and went down this path building 3 or 4 different furnaces for crystal growth and then oxidation studies. From there, I went to a jet engine company and really enjoyed working the transition from R&D and advanced technology to production, which is really, really difficult. This was further emphasized by my time at Lockheed Martin Skunk Works(TM). There, we were often presented with incredibly technical challenges to make, assemble and/or survive on station. I wasn't always provided a lot of information about the application. It was all mission directed which I loved. As we would joke, we were making something that had never been made before, to do a job we may not understand for an application we don't have a need to know about. It taught me that people are really the key to any technology transition. The technology just has to work. Describe your current position within your organization. I am the President of The Barnes Global Advisors (TBGA) and CEO of Metal Powder Works. TBGA is an engineering firm and we work with companies all over the world on advanced manufacturing, mostly additive manufacturing issues. I've enjoyed bringing on people, some of whom I've known since graduate school and others that I've recently met, and letting them do what excites them and gets them moving in the morning. Metal Powder Works is my second job where my partner and I invented a new technology to manufacture polymer and metal powders. Again, the technology works and now we need to convince people that our product not only works but is better or has better attributes. So, I lead through my experience mostly and try to pass that on to my team. What do you want people to know about you? I want to make a difference. I don't care to be famous but people who knew me thought I was fair (maybe tough), inquisitive (challenging), and always did the right thing (when it was presented to me, lol). I led by example. Provide your vision for the future of mfg? Future of AM? The future of manufacturing is solving problems as it always has been. It is increasingly team based. AM is truly team centric and requires an interdisciplinary team for it to work and be useful. I hope that we get more diversity into engineering and manufacturing because we need the brains and I don't care what they are wrapped in. I find that my teams which are very gender diverse arrive at better answers. We need better answers.
