Ahead of the Smart Manufacturing for Aerospace and Defense Summit 2025, we’re pleased to share the official advisory board working with our team to ensure the event effectively targets the industry’s unique, current challenges, and builds strategies for collaboratively overcoming them.

Travis is a manufacturing technology expert who bridges the gap between production floor operations and overarching business objectives. He leads the development, implementation, and continuous improvement of Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES), which are crucial for monitoring, controlling, and optimizing manufacturing processes. Travis possesses a deep understanding of both technical and functional aspects of MES, ensuring systems meet the intricate needs of manufacturing environments.

Warren B. Smith

Warren B. Smith is a Sr. Principal Systems Engineer at General Dynamics Mission Systems, and the Principal Investigator for the company’s Digital Ecosystem investments.  In this role, he is leading a cross-functional team building the Digital Thread of design-to-manufacturing information across Manufacturing, Engineering, and IT.  For the past three decades, he has developed innovative techniques to dramatically increase engineering productivity in a variety of contexts.

Crystal is a Technical Fellow and Certified Architect at Raytheon, in the Industry 4.0 portion of the Operations Excellence organization. Crystal and her team are responsible for creating lean, connected Smart Factories and support the planning, development and execution of these technologies as well as their long term sustainment across Raytheon nationwide. These projects include the Raytheon Digital Factory as well as Industry 4.0, Smart Factory and Digital Thread initiatives that are used in each location to improve cycle time, reduce cost and deliver consistent high quality.

Kevin Maring

Kevin Maring is a Technical Fellow at Lockheed Martin, based out of Syracuse, New York. His focus areas center on Advanced Manufacturing Technologies and Digital Transformation, specifically the role manufacturing plays in the digital thread. With 25 years of experience in the commercial electronics and aerospace & defense industries, Kevin has worked many different tactical and strategic projects, invented new organizational roles in response to gaps, and taken on numerous stretch assignments to help individual programs adapt to new ways of doing business.