Chris Urban at a Glance

Chris Urban founded Forged Path Automation in 2025 after 25 years in manufacturing. He began as an engineering technician on the shop floor. He later scaled a gas turbine business unit to $50 million and served as president of a US machine tool company. He now leads process-first robotic automation from Landrum, South Carolina.

Most automation companies come from people who sell equipment. Chris Urban came up on the other side of that transaction. He spent 25 years inside real production environments before he built a robotic cell for a customer. Because he has stood where your operators stand, he starts every project with the process rather than the robot.

What he brings to a project:

25 years of hands-on manufacturing and operational leadership
Shop floor experience in electrical installation, pipe fitting, and skid troubleshooting
A 15-year growth record inside a high-precision aerospace and turbine supplier
Plant relocation experience covering more than 100 CNC and processing machines
Business unit leadership that scaled an IGT operation to $50 million in value
International management across European and US manufacturing facilities
Process knowledge in EDM, laser cutting, waterjet, and surface preparation
Direct customer involvement from first conversation through long-term support

From Shop Floor to Plant Leadership

Shop Floor and Process Foundation. He began his career performing electrical installation, pipe fitting, and skid troubleshooting on industrial gas turbines. Because that work happened at the machine level, he learned mechanical integrity and shop floor ergonomics from the inside out.

Meyer Tool, Inc. in Cincinnati, Ohio. A 15-year run at Meyer Tool followed, where he led a specialized subsidiary. He managed the acquisition and 150,000 square foot renovation of a 10-acre Center of Excellence. He directed the relocation and recommissioning of more than 100 industrial CNC and processing machines. That move hit 100 percent equipment requalification with no major downtime and no quality non-conformances.

Global Expansion. He developed business across European markets and drove the expansion of Meyer Tool’s facility in Kalisz, Poland. He also grew the IGT business unit from a small subsidiary into a $30 million enterprise with nearly 175 employees. Total IGT business value reached $50 million inside a $300 million corporate organization.

Ushers Machine Tool and Aalberts. He served as President of Ushers Machine Tool and US Liaison for Aalberts Industries. That group ran $2.3 billion in revenue at the time. He grew the US portfolio to $20 million while bringing international manufacturing standards state-side.

Business Ownership. He partnered to expand Innovative Manufacturing & Design, combining EDM and high-power laser processing with traditional CNC capability. In 2021, he co-founded Innovative Surface Solutions, which specializes in gas turbine component cleaning and surface preparation.

Manufacturing Experience in Aerospace and Gas Turbines

Chris Urban has 25 years across aerospace, industrial gas turbine, and general manufacturing. His work spans machine-level troubleshooting, high-precision EDM and laser processing, plant relocation, and executive leadership. He has scaled business units past $50 million in value and directed US operations for a multibillion-dollar international group.

Parts are expensive, tolerances are tight, and a scrapped component costs more than the labor behind it. Because he built his career inside that pressure, he treats variation as an engineering problem rather than an operator problem.

Areas of Technical Focus

Custom Robotic Cell Integration. He designs every cell around your parts, your process, and your production environment. The tooling fits the work rather than the reverse.

Process Engineering and System Design. Factory layouts, equipment migration, and 3D digital-twin simulation come before fabrication. Problems surface in simulation rather than on your floor.

Robotic Finishing Automation. Deburring, grinding, and material removal demand steady contact force across variable surfaces. That capability came from years of hands-on finishing work.

Robotic Cleaning and Surface Preparation. Coating failures start one step earlier, at surface prep. Because of his Innovative Surface Solutions background, he engineers cleaning and preparation as a controlled process.

Abrasive Waterjet Cutting. Cold cutting removes heat-affected zones entirely. Heavy-gauge material holds its properties with no distortion at the cut edge.

Why Process Comes Before Robotics

Robots do exactly what they are told. A robot cannot tell whether a part sits square or whether contact force stayed steady. That judgment lives in the process. Chris Urban builds the process first and picks hardware to serve it.

An integrator sells a cell. The cell underperforms. The diagnosis turns into a negotiation while parts keep coming out wrong.

Process-first design closes that loop before anyone fabricates anything. He maps part geometry, cycle forces, and real part variation first, so cells hold specification from the start.

Education and Credentials

Master of Business Administration, Kaplan College
Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration, Kaplan College
Business Administration, 40+ advanced credits, Hudson Valley Community College, Troy, New York
Associate of Applied Science, Hudson Valley Community College, Troy, New York

That combination matters because automation decisions are financial decisions. He reads a shop floor and a capital request with equal fluency. Every engagement starts with the production problem rather than a quote.

Why Chris Urban Founded Forged Path Automation

By 2025, Chris Urban had spent 25 years on the buying side of automation. He specified cells, accepted them, and lived with the results. That included systems which never performed the way they were sold.

He founded Forged Path Automation to build the system he spent his career wishing vendors would deliver. The about Forged Path Automation page covers the accountability model that came out of that decision. What he brought to it personally was a buyer’s memory of what goes wrong.

What Working With Chris Urban Looks Like

Chris Urban stays involved from the first process conversation through installation and long-term support. He walks the floor and reviews actual production parts rather than reference samples, finding where variation enters before anyone discusses robot brands or cell layouts.

Manufacturers running high-mix production tend to find that conversation more useful than a quote.

Contact Chris Urban

Automation projects fail when nobody owns the process. The most useful first conversation covers your parts, your variation, and your bottleneck. Chris Urban and the Forged Path Automation team bring single-source accountability to your floor.

Call 864-304-9161, email info@forgedpathautomation.com, or reach the team from Landrum, South Carolina.

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

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