Robinson Helicopter Company’s current president and CEO, David Smith, is committed to extending Robinson’s legacy at least another half century. He said in our interview, “My goal is to make sure we’re in business for hundreds of years.” How does one do that? By playing the long game. “When they recruited me here, [Robinson’s] shareholders told me that they want to grow the business and they made it very clear we have a business-growth horizon of 20 or more years. With that, we can build a generational foundation like what Frank built originally, and we can build a hugely successful, diverse business from his foundation. We are thinking on a 50-year time horizon because we have to. I learned that from doing business in China over the years; they really think in epochs, not quarters. Why would we change something that’s already working? Because it wouldn’t have succeeded for [another] 50 years, with relatively few doing the heavy lifting. We are building a business with a sustainable future that will last at least another 50 years.”
Smith is the first person to lead Robinson Helicopter Company without the surname “Robinson,” having been preceded by Frank and his son, Kurt Robinson. Mr. Smith went to Torrance with his own idealistic vision for Robinson Helicopter Company, with which we’ll conclude this profile. However, let’s first get to know Robinson’s current pilot-in-command. Actually, that title is a bit of a misnomer on my part, for Smith is not a pilot for good reason...
During high school in his native home of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Smith gravitated toward his father’s fondness for engineering. Dad, Lonnie, changed career horses midstream from being an electrical engineer to become a lawyer. He later told his son, “You can choose whatever career you want, but if you become a lawyer, I’ll disown you.”
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UNDER PRESSURE
With that fatherly advice received, Smith worked toward being accepted by the Air Force Academy so that he might eventually become an aerospace engineer after an Air Force career, but his epilepsy disqualified him from, he says, “fun” options, such as being an Air Force pilot. Smith then closed the cockpit door on that and took an alternate path by attending MIT with the goal to become a design engineer. He says MIT was “academically brutally hard, even painful.” How hard? One of his classmates was a Marine helicopter pilot who flew attack missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, an astronaut, and mother of twins. At a class reunion, she said her four years at MIT were by far the hardest thing she ever did in her life. “The whole class applauded in agreement,” Smith says. “I completely agree; when I graduated from MIT with an aeronautical engineering degree, the real world seemed easier and slower by comparison.”
Smith doesn’t seem to do anything slow. After he finished his rigorous college years in Boston, he immediately headed to Texas with his hard-earned engineering diploma to quick-start his career on the Bell Helicopter XworX Experimental Design team. (While employed, Smith later earned an MBA from the University of Texas. )
During his first 11 years at Bell Flight (he returned later to Bell in 2020 for three more years to build a factory in Wichita, Kansas, after five years at Tru Simulation), Smith climbed up the engineering rungs of the Bell corporate ladder to become program director of the Bell 505 Jet Ranger X. In that role, he was responsible for all activities associated with the design, certification and delivery of Bell’s new game-changing, single-engine helicopter. Smith considers leading that team a source of professional pride. “Anyone who was on that program would probably say it’s a career highlight
for them too; I know that because we still stay in touch,” he says. “Working at Bell was a great and informative experience; it was hard to leave the people there. It taught me about the challenges that affect big business: I learned how material moves throughout a business, how data informs decisions—and often doesn’t, and how unions work and connect closely to productivity. I just learned at Bell a whole slew of useful things that I still benefit from today at Robinson Helicopter.”
Vice versa, Smith also benefitted at Bell from Robinson Helicopter when he took the lead of the 505 project. “One of the first things we did in that program was rent a Robinson R66, took it apart and de-engineered it. I could clearly see how Robinson built a great product,” he says. “We then sent a team to tour Robinson’s factory; at that time, they gave free tours. We studied the heck out of Robinson and realized they were going to be kind of hard to beat.”
Thus, a foundation of respect for Robinson Helicopter Company was laid before Smith first met President/CEO Kurt Robinson and Peter Riedl, Robinson’s head of engineering. At the time of that meeting, Smith was then at Tru Simulation + Training. Robinson and Riedl repeatedly asked Smith to join them at Robinson, but the timing wasn’t right. “I was then focused on sims for Tru,” Smith says. “Every six months or so, Pete would contact me to touch base. Then, I was later contacted by Kurt, Pete, and a head-hunting firm after Frank passed away and the family brought on additional investors. I had four opportunities [from others] at that time, including some overseas, but being VP of operations at Robinson was the best place for me and my family by far.”
My goal is to make sure we’re in business for hundreds of years.
rotorpro.com
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