By Chris Urban, Founder, Forged Path Automation

South Carolina spent the spring formalizing something its supply base already felt coming.

At the SC Competes Spring Summit in Rock Hill this March, state officials launched SC Defense, an initiative folding the existing SC Aerospace, SC Logistics, and SC Tech clusters into a single effort aimed at helping South Carolina companies navigate defense contracting and strengthen defense supply chains. SC Aerospace counts more than 500 aerospace and aviation companies across the state and puts the industry’s combined direct and indirect economic impact near $40 billion.

The opportunity is obvious. The qualification burden is what most shops underestimate.

Commercial Demand Isn’t Making Room

Defense growth is landing on top of a commercial market that has not cooled. U.S. carrier system passenger traffic is forecast to grow 2.4 percent in 2026 and average 2.4 percent annually over the next two decades, according to the FAA Aerospace Forecast for Fiscal Years 2026–2046. The same document flags supply chain constraints as an ongoing limit on airframer deliveries — and records 204 commercial space launches and re-entries in fiscal 2025, roughly a fifth of all such activity since 1989.

Every one of those programs draws on the same regional pool of machinists, finishers, and inspectors.

Where Suppliers Actually Get Disqualified

Losing an aerospace or defense qualification is rarely a capability problem. It is a repeatability problem.

Primes and defense buyers increasingly want statistical evidence that a process holds specification — not just confirmation that a finished part measured inside the print. Surface finish on a structural component, edge condition after deburring, cleanliness ahead of a coating cycle: each has to be demonstrably consistent across a production run, and each has to be documented.

Manual operations make that hard to prove. A part finished by a twenty-year hand and one finished by a six-month hire can both pass inspection while sitting in very different places inside the tolerance band. When a customer asks for capability data, that spread is exactly what surfaces.

It is the same shift now reshaping the Upstate’s power-generation supply chain, where accelerated testing turns process variation into documented failure data.

The Training Pipeline Wasn’t Built for This Gap

South Carolina’s workforce infrastructure is a genuine competitive asset. readySC, established in 1961 and among the oldest workforce training programs in the country, works with the state’s 16 technical colleges to recruit and train for companies relocating to or expanding in South Carolina. It is one of the main reasons manufacturers choose this state.

But that program is built around plant startups and expansions. It is not designed to close the gap facing an existing 80-person machine shop that needs three more people who can hold a specified finish on a titanium bracket — a skill measured in years, not weeks.

That mismatch compounds the arithmetic laid out in South Carolina’s 2026 manufacturing workforce data, where replacement hiring dwarfs net job growth across the sector and lands hardest on precision production roles.

Qualification Rewards Engineered Processes

The suppliers winning this work have converged on the same response: move the critical operations off individual skill and onto documented, programmed processes. Fixed paths, controlled contact force, recorded cycle parameters, repeatable cleaning ahead of coating and inspection.

The point is not headcount reduction. It is that a programmed process generates the evidence a customer audit asks for, and generates it identically on part five thousand as on part one. A skilled operator produces excellent parts. A documented process produces excellent parts you can prove.

There is a second-order benefit that shows up in bid packages. Shops that can hand a prime a control plan with real capability data attached tend to clear supplier qualification faster than shops that cannot — which matters when program awards move on schedule as much as on merit.

South Carolina’s aerospace and defense base has spent fifteen years proving it can build complex products. The next round of awards will go to the shops that can prove they build them the same way every time.

Forged Path Automation

Forged Path Automation designs, builds, programs, and supports turnkey robotic cells for manufacturers across aerospace, defense, turbine, automotive, and MRO sectors — with one accountable team from process engineering through long-term support.

Our Services Include:

Robotic Cleaning Automation — Repeatable part cleaning and surface preparation ahead of coating, inspection, and reassembly
Custom Robotic Tooling and Fixture Design — Purpose-built EOAT and fixtures validated in real production conditions

Preparing for a customer audit or a new program award? Contact Forged Path Automation to walk through your process — or visit our working demo job shop in Landrum, South Carolina.

Works Cited

“Forecast Overview 2026–2046.” FAA Aerospace Forecast Fiscal Years 2026–2046, Federal Aviation Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation, www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation/aerospace_forecasts/2026_Forecast_Overview.pdf. Accessed 11 Aug. 2026.

“About Us.” readySC, South Carolina Technical College System, www.readysc.org/about.html. Accessed 11 Aug. 2026.

About the Author

Chris Urban is the Founder of Forged Path Automation. His 26+ year manufacturing career spans from an international manufacturing specialist trained in Zurich, Switzerland, to corporate President and business owner. Before launching Forged Path Automation (FPA), Chris scaled an industrial gas turbine business unit from its infancy to $50M in value, directed the zero-downtime relocation of 100+ industrial machines to a 150,000 sq. ft. Center of Excellence, and led US operations for a $2.3B global firm. Today, Chris leverages his deep technical roots and an MBA to engineer turnkey robotic finishing cells that deliver total production stability and clear ROI for high-mix manufacturers. Chris holds an advanced background in both the technical and financial sides of manufacturing, combining studies in Applied Science with a Master of Business Administration.

Connect with Chris on LinkedIn to talk shop or discuss your floor’s ROI.

Follow Forged Path Automation on LinkedIn or visit ForgedPathAutomation.com.