Tim Gladdy on Manufacturing, Knowledge Sharing, and Overcoming Challenges

This interview is part of a series featuring the members of our diverse AU community, from speakers and conference attendees to forum participants and online commenters. You are AU.

1. What’s your current job role?
Global Engineering Applications Leader

2. What are your main areas of expertise and interest?
Product design, manufacturing, and implementation management.

3. What one challenge in your work would be most satisfying to solve?
Removing duplication of data, both text and geometry.

4. What one thing should new graduates entering your field know?
Be flexible in your thinking and prepared to adapt and adopt change.

5. What is your all-time favorite AU class and why?
Generative design for fixturing, because it shows the thought process of moving away from product design to how parts are efficiently and accurately machined.

6. Why do you create, design, or innovate?
To make life more efficient and productive for the users of the applications I support, which then enables them to be more effective in designing better products for our customers.

7. What has been one of your most impactful moments attending AU and why?
My first presentation, Implementing a Global Data Management Solution, which shows that there is interest in deploying global solutions. The ability to impart my knowledge and experience to others is satisfying.

8. Who’s your greatest hero, real or fictional?
I don’t really have heroes, but admire people that do things others dismiss because they are too difficult or do not see the longer-term benefits, and those that go the extra mile to achieve.

9. Where do you see your industry in 10 years?
Still manufacturing traditional and breakthrough products but with more intelligence built in as a result of IoT.

10. Describe a favorite project you’ve worked on using Autodesk software.
Global Vault implementation and upgrade to AutoCAD and Inventor, a challenging project that many believed could not be achieved. It has turned out to be a very successful project bringing users together and providing a number of benefits to the business and users.

11. What new skill, personal or professional, would you most like to learn?
How to write software code.

12. If you could have dinner with one person, living or dead, who would it be and why?
Bobby Moore to talk football, West Ham, and England.

13. If you could contribute one thing to making a better world, what would it be?
Belief—every challenge can be overcome if you work at finding the solution.

Check out Tim’s profile (and follow him) to learn more about his work and contributions to the AU community.