August 2016 - Marine Technology Reporter

Teledyne Maintains Course

Marine Technology Reporter

In what has become something of an MTR100 tradition, MTR visits with a trio of executives from Teledyne, a diverse company with links in each sector of the market, for insights on current developments and future trends. This year we speak with Mike Read, President of Teledyne Marine; William Egan - Vice President Sales & Marketing – Imaging & Instruments for Teledyne Marine; and Ken Nagengast, SVP, Global Technology & Group CTO.

 
Teledyne has grown steadily, serving as a market consolidator over the past decade. Please discuss the overall corporate strategy devised to align this group of companies and capabilities into a cohesive corporate entity.
Egan The goal has been to align with our customers in their markets, ensuring that we maximize the return on investment for our customers through leveraging skills and knowledge across the whole Teledyne Marine group and Teledyne as a whole. This has necessitated a change on how we go to market in sales, so rather than multiple independent approaches, we are able to bring a coherent and cohesive approach to our customers, with the ability to demonstrate the complete solution from Teledyne Marine supported by domain experts. 
Additionally, across the group we are developing capabilities and solutions with the consolidation and relocation of key business operations to enable centers of excellences. This is something incredibly unique within the marine industry to ensure we can deliver better products and services to our customers. 
By bringing these business operations together under common management structures and locations, we are creating businesses of more significant scale to better serve our customers with more powerful scientific capabilities and stronger applications development, to continue our success built on innovation, investment and customer service.
 
For those readers not familiar with the cumulative Teledyne brand, can you share some facts and figures that give size, shape and scope to your offering today.
Read Teledyne Technologies Inc. (NYSE – TDY) is a $2.3B company, founded in the early 1960s that provides enabling technologies for industrial growth markets. We have evolved from a company that was primarily focused on aerospace and defense to one that serves multiple markets that require advanced technology and high reliability. In addition to defense and aerospace, these markets include deep-water oil and gas exploration and production, oceanographic research, air and water quality environmental monitoring, factory automation and medical imaging.  
Teledyne Marine was created in 2015 and is a market-focused collection of 23 Teledyne companies operating as a single consolidated business organization. With over 1700 employees operating out of 25 global manufacturing plants and service centers strategically located in major marine and energy centers around the world.   We offer the most significant range of technology in the marine industry built around five synergistic technology platforms: Imaging (Acoustic & Optical), Instruments, Interconnect, Seismic and Vehicles. We are focused primarily on six significant markets:  Energy, Oceanographic Science, Hydrography/Navigation, Defense/Security, Water Resources/Civil engineering and Aquaculture/Fisheries.  This enables us to offer integrated technologies to solve our customers’ most challenging problems.
 
Please discuss key acquisitions in the previous 12 months, with insights on what each company or brand ‘brings to the table.’
Read Over the last year we have integrated the 23 brands of Teledyne Marine into a single cohesive operating team.  We’ve structured our team into the five technology segments, to cover our six primary markets and in addition, in response to our customers’ requests to aid them in controlling cost, we have consolidated manufacturing operations by establishing centers of excellence around the world and expanding sales offices into the heart of our busiest regions. Most recently we expanded our Shanghai office and service center to better service and support the Asia-pacific region.    Our latest acquisitions include; Bowtech, a leader in subsea cameras and lighting and Bolt Technologies, a leader in seismic exploration sound sources and control systems.  Bowtech has provided our team with additive technology in optical imaging to augment our strong acoustic imaging presence. Through the Bolt Acquisition, we gained an expanded piece of the seismic technology to support our Teledyne Geophysical streamer line. Bolt is a leader in Seismic Source, and coupled with Real Time Systems controls and AGG interconnect, Teledyne Marine now boasts a significant share of the total seismic solution set. The Bolt acquisition delivered an additive capability to supplement our strong vehicles segment with the SeaBotix family of inspection class ROVs. SeaBotix has earned an enviable reputation for reliability and performance across multiple markets from ocean science to defense and security.  Most recently, Teledyne has acquired CARIS, a leader in processing and visualizing sonar data, as well as producing, managing and distributing marine geospatial information. (See related story on page 36).
 
Though it has started to recover, much discussion over the past 18 months has centered on the precipitous drop in energy pricing globally. Please put in perspective how this protracted market lull has impacted your company.
Read Like the rest of the industry, the price of oil has impacted our business. We have taken the opportunity to increase the focus on cost controls, and on reducing many of the non-value-added activities throughout the design, operations and deployment stages. We are embracing the opportunities to work with our customers even earlier and more closely to design in the best technical solutions, using the best material and system designs to meet the specific performance requirements for the particular project. We are encouraged that in this cycle the operators are participating and are in fact working together to embrace the ideas that the supply chain can offer. We are confident that with all the creative solutions that Teledyne Marine can provide, we will in fact come out of this cycle in an even stronger position.
 
What are the signs/statistics you monitor to gauge the current health and future prospects of your business?
Egan There are many economic factors we take into consideration due to the diversity of our business. Examples that we monitor are the development of ports and harbors, the investment of governments into civil infrastructure and environmental programs, the new and emerging technologies in defense and security, defense programs, as well as the investment status of offshore oil and gas projects. We also closely monitor global oceanographic research and monitoring budgets.
 
What do those signs tell you now?
Egan While the offshore market, specifically oil and gas, is down, we do see that this is now (hopefully) at the bottom. However, the advances in technology and cost leadership to ensure cost effective and efficient working has allowed to us continue to develop successful collaborations. Our success in winning new projects and programmes for defense worldwide has strengthened our position in this market with new technologies and underpinning our strategic vision. Despite some of our challenging markets, our new alignment of resources and approaches has already resulted in significant new business.
 
Every business has its challenges. What do you consider to be your organization’s biggest challenge(s), and how are you investing to address those challenges?
Egan With rapid and volatile markets, agility and adaptation is paramount, along with a robust and solid foundation. We have and will continue to monitor our routes to market and ensuring our business is streamlined to meet the future market conditions.  Specifically, it is our people who will affect the greatest change, so our investment in our people is a constant theme to ensure continued success.
 
Nagengast Our people are our greatest asset and can also be our greatest challenge. We continue to seek out the most highly skilled people to support our mission. Our technology group has developed an excellent partnership with local universities that ensures we are always looking at the best talent entering the workforce.  We have set up a successful internship program that allows us to test a nice cross-section of students prior to them graduating. We provide challenging problems for the interns to solve, and in turn, we not only get results that directly benefit our organization, but we also get to evaluate their strengths and potential.  We have hired many interns and this has helped to strengthen our company, maintain the most up to date skills and meet the demands of the business.  The key to succeeding as Teledyne Marine is to execute as if we are one team rather than individual groups.  We continually drive this message home, that we are one global team, which addresses the challenges that each smaller individual group may have by providing a large base of staff to assist in execution.
 
As the Teledyne brand grows in breadth and depth, what do you consider the primary strength of the organization as a whole?
Egan With over 1,700 employees in locations over the globe, literally “everywhere you look”, Teledyne Marine is able to support our customers quickly, ensuring the utilization of their investment. We are fortunate that within Teledyne Technologies we have a customer and company sponsored applied research center that strengthens our product development expertise, and combined with our ability to offer complete solutions from Teledyne Marine, these attributes enable our customers to have leading edge technologies to drive and support their growth. Within Teledyne, we have a technically experienced workforce to operate alongside our customers, assisting them to deliver the results they need.
 
What can the company do to better leverage those strengths?
Egan We will continue to invest in our people, work closely with our customers and drive the new technologies to solve the challenges for our customers today and for the future. Working closely within the Teledyne group of companies we will continue to offer new solutions from our portfolio to enhance our customer’s offerings and operational excellence to ensure customer satisfaction and engagement. 
We will continue to explore synergies and opportunities across group, and maintain the trust our customers have in us.
 
Looking at the subsea market as a whole, what do you see as the defining trends or technologies that will drive your business for the coming generation?
Egan We see more and more of the market moving to drive the efficiency of working, safety of personnel, and creating better value through cost controls, earned through earlier partnering on projects, through establishing standards in design, and setting realistic performance requirements matched to the application. Customers are looking for cost effective solutions for existing and new operations, the ability to gain more insight through better technologies and ensuring safety of personnel by utilizing unmanned or autonomous platforms with longer mission duration.
Teledyne Marine is well positioned to create new efficient solutions, be that for new or existing operators, with the breath of systems and complete solutions we have to offer today and the future.  Our expanded Technical Sales organization is applications-aware and is prepared to usher in Teledyne subject matter experts to assist our customers in resolving challenges across our solutions range, whether within Teledyne Marine or out to the expanded expertise of Teledyne, as with our access to Materials Scientists at Teledyne Scientific.  
 
Nagengast The lower oil price has impacted not only the oil and gas industry ,but also many adjacent industries that rely on oil and gas to fund oceanographic research.  This new found interest in providing more cost effective solutions is at the top of our focus in all of our current technology development projects. We have been early to adopt a philosophy of partnering with our customers to provide better value solutions.  We feel that we are leading the way in focusing on lowering overall lifecycle costs to our customers. This trend is here to stay and we are happy that we have already positioned our teams to this end. Our ability to share resources across Teledyne Marine provides us with great opportunities to provide integrated and innovative solutions in many aspects of worldwide subsea needs.
 
R&D: Can you share with our readers some insights on how the R&D effort is set up within Teledyne, with specifics on the cumulative annual investment and numbers to give the effort size and scope?
Egan We have many things we can work on across the group, but the challenge is ensuring we balance technology gaps, new and emerging technologies as well as being agile to respond to demands. We continually assess the return on investment both for our customers and ourselves, as well as ensuring we are aligning with market requirements both today and tomorrow.
 
Nagengast Teledyne Marine invests a significant fraction of our sales annually on internal R&D.  Additionally, we receive healthy amounts of external funding from our customers which greatly increases our total annual R&D investment. In 2016, we will receive over $20M in funded R&D to develop innovative products to solve our customer’s important challenges. We have a strong global technical team of approximately 250 staff, a comprehensive world class test an& evaluation facility in our Technology Development Center in Daytona, easy access to our scientists at Teledyne’s Scientific Center and a strong IP portfolio.  We approach every development project with a “show me the data” approach.  Our development process and reliability program, we believe, is world leading. We believe this differentiates us from most if not all of our competitors and is why our customers continue to invest in us. 
 
R&D: What are you working on today that your customers can expect to see in the coming 12 to 18 months.
Nagengast We have quite an extensive portfolio of new products in our development pipeline covering a wide variety of applications.  We have developed a family of products we refer to as Active Flying leads.  These are subsea interconnect solutions that allow for the conversion of power and communication formats such as fiber optic to electrical Ethernet, extended CANBus, power conversions and more.  These are revolutionizing subsea interconnections and provides our customers with flexibility in subsea field architecture as well as providing lower cost alternatives.  We continue to develop and release advanced subsea sonar imaging solutions that are world leading in performance. We are most excited about our current efforts to integrate our various subsea solutions into smaller, lower cost and higher performance products that will allow our customers to select the best all-around product to meet their particular needs as opposed to buying individual products for each specific function.  An example would be an integrated equipment to provide navigation, station-keeping and control to an ROV with one packaged solution and one seamless software package versus the current practice of buying and installing individual components and then trying to sew the various software packages together.
 
 
Teledyne CARIS
For more than 35 years, Teledyne CARIS has been making software designed for the marine GIS community. Teledyne CARIS also offers a comprehensive level of support through training sessions and consulting, online technical support, email and multilingual telephone support.  Employing more than 170 engineering, IT and business professionals, Teledyne CARIS headquarters is located in Fredericton, Canada, and holds additional offices in the Netherlands, the U.S., Australia and the U.K.  CARIS software is selected by national mapping and charting agencies, survey companies, port and waterway authorities, oil and gas companies and academic institutions worldwide. The Ping-to-Chart solution is designed to deliver an integrated and seamless solution for the entire workflow of hydrographic information, from processing the echo-sounder ping to the production and distribution of the chart. This integrated software line provides clients with resource optimization and a true operational advantage. The Ping-to-Chart toolset includes products that address the need to manage bathymetric data sets containing billions of soundings, to support the development of multiple chart types from a single source, and to be able to distribute and interrogate high density bathymetry over the internet. CARIS Onboard is the newest package in the CARIS suite of products. This is a near real-time and autonomous data processing package that has been developed with AUVs and Unmanned Surface Vehicles in mind, but is also a force multiplier when used on survey motor launches.    |   Email: [email protected]   |   http://caris.com/
 
Teledyne Marine Instruments
Teledyne Benthos designs and manufactures rugged, reliable oceanographic instrumentation and sensor solutions for marine environments. Products include: acoustic releases, acoustic telemetry modems, hydrophones, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), glass flotation spheres and instrument housing, and locating devices. Contact:  Teledyne Benthos, 49 Edgerton Drive, N. Falmouth, MA 02556; Tel: +1-508-563-1000  |  E-mail: [email protected]   |   www.benthos.com
 
Teledyne CDL Systems & Solutions is a specialist in the development of custom solutions for unique marine applications. Utilizing off-the-shelf products and existing components, tailored units can be provided with multiple options, highly specific to the end-user application. Contact:  Teledyne CDL, 10661 Shadow Wood Drive, Houston, TX 77043; Tel: +1-281-710-7276  |  E-mail: [email protected]   |   www.teledyne-cdl.com 
 
Teledyne Cormon designs and manufactures subsea and surface erosion and corrosion sensors, as well as flow assurance monitoring systems. Contact: Teledyne Cormon, Unit 12/Balmacassie Commercial Centre, Ellon AB41 8QR, UK; Tel: +44 1358 280480  |  E-mail:  [email protected]   |  www.cormon.com
 
Teledyne Oceanscience see listing under Vehicles.
 
Teledyne RD Instruments is the industry’s leading manufacturer of Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers (ADCPs) for current profiling and wave measurement applications, and Doppler Velocity Logs (DVLs) for precision underwater navigation applications. The Citadel line of CTDs rounds out their product offerings. Contact:  Teledyne RD Instruments, 14020 Stowe Drive, Poway, CA 92064; Tel. +1-858-482-2600  |  E-mail: [email protected]  |  www.rdinstruments.com
 
Teledyne TSS is a leader in the design, manufacture, and support of marine products for applications including marine navigation, motion compensation, positioning, and subsea pipe and cable survey. Contact:  Teledyne TSS, 1 Blackmoor Lane, Croxley Green Business Park, Watford, Hertfordshire, WD18 8GA, UK; Tel: +44 1923 216020  |  E-mail: [email protected]   |   www.teledyne-tss.com 
 
Teledyne Marine Imaging
Teledyne BlueView is the leading provider of state-of-the-art compact acoustic underwater measurement and imaging solutions for defense, energy, civil engineering, transportation, and port security applications worldwide. Contact:  Teledyne BlueView, 18702 North Creek Parkway Suite 100 Bothell, WA 98011; Tel: +1-425-492-7400|  E-mail: [email protected]   |  www.blueview.com
 
Teledyne Bowtech specializes in the design and manufacture of highly innovative underwater vision systems, including color and monochrome cameras, LED lights, strobes, and accessories. Contact:  Teledyne Bowtech, ABZ Business Park, International Avenue, Dyce, Aberdeen, AB21 0BH; Tel: +44 1224 772345  |  E-mail: [email protected]   |   www.bowtech.co.uk  
 
Teledyne Odom Hydrographic has designed and manufactured precision digital echosounders for more than 30 years. Teledyne Odom Hydrographic is the world leader in shallow water single and multibeam echo sounders. Contact:  Teledyne Odom Hydrographic, 5212 Verdugo Way, CA 93012 USA   |   Tel: +1-805-964-6260|  E-mail: [email protected]   |  www.odomhydrographic.com
 
Teledyne RESON is one of the leading providers of high-quality underwater acoustic solutions. With a global presence and worldwide service facilities, we specialize in the design, development, manufacture, and commissioning of advanced multibeam sonar systems, transducers, hydrophones, and software. Contact:  Teledyne RESON, Fabriksvangen 13, 3550 Slangerup, Denmark;  Tel: +4547380022|  E-mail: [email protected]   |  www.teledyne-reson.com
 
Teledyne Marine Vehicles
Teledyne Benthos see listing under Instruments.
 
Teledyne Gavia provides turnkey survey solutions for military, commercial, and scientific applications. The GaviaAUV carries an array of sensors and custom payload modules, making it perfect for monitoring or surveillance tasks where autonomy, cost, and ease of deployment matters. Contact:  Teledyne Gavia, Vesturvör 29, 200 Kópavogur, Iceland; Tel: +354 511.29.90 |   www.teledynegavia.com
 
Teledyne Oceanscience supplies the oceanographic, hydrologic, and hydrographic communities with deployment platforms for environmental monitoring instrumentation, including towed surface platforms and turnkey remote hydrographic survey boat systems with environmental monitoring and/or bathymetry equipment and more. Contact:  Teledyne Oceanscience, 14020 Stowe Drive, Poway, CA 92064; Tel: +1-760.754.2400|  E-mail: [email protected]   |   www.oceanscience.com
 
Teledyne SeaBotix is a world-leading manufacturer of underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) that perform a multitude of tasks, including maritime security, search and recovery, hull and pipeline inspection, hazardous environment intervention, aquaculture, sensor deployment, and more. Contact:  Teledyne SeaBotix, 9970 Carroll Canyon Road, Suite B, San Diego, CA  92131; Tel: +1-619.450.4000  |  E-mail: [email protected]   |   www.seabotix.com
 
Teledyne Webb Research designs and manufactures scientific instruments for oceanographic research and monitoring that specialize in three areas of ocean instrumentation: neutrally buoyant, autonomous drifters and profilers; autonomous underwater gliding vehicles; and moored underwater sound sources. Contact:  Teledyne Webb Research, 49 Edgerton Drive, N. Falmouth, MA 02556; Tel: +1-508-548-2077  |  E-mail: [email protected]   |   www.webbresearch.com
 
Teledyne Marine Interconnect
Teledyne DGO specializes in high-reliability, high-pressure connectors, penetrators, cabling, and feedthrough systems for harsh environments. Contact:  Teledyne DGO, 162 Corporate Drive, Suite 100 Portsmouth, New Hampshire 03801; Tel: +1 603-474-5571|  E-mail: [email protected]   |  www.dgo.com
 
Teledyne Impulse designs and manufactures high-reliability electrical and optical interconnection systems, motorized power transfer switches, and custom insert molded compression connectors for a broad range of harsh environment applications. Contact:  Teledyne Impulse, 9855 Carroll Canyon Road San Diego, CA 92131; Tel: +1-858-842-3100|  E-mail: [email protected]   |  www.teledyneimpulse.com
 
Teledyne Impulse-PDM is an established supplier and manufacturer of electrical and optical interconnect, and designs and develops molding and encapsulation solutions for underwater applications. Contact:  Teledyne Impulse-PDM, 4-6 Alton Business Centre Omega Park, Alton, Hampshire, England GU34 2YU   |   Tel: +44 (0)1420 85848|  E-mail: [email protected]   |  www.teledyneimpulse-pdm.com
 
Teledyne ODI is a world leader in subsea electrical and fiber optic interconnect systems for offshore oil and gas, oceanographic, and defense applications. Contact:  Teledyne ODI, 1026 North Williamson Blvd. Daytona Beach, Florida 3211; Tel: +1 386 236 0780|  E-mail: [email protected]   |  www.odi.com
 
Teledyne Cable Solutions, an alliance formed of Teledyne Storm Cable and Teledyne VariSystems, provides bulk wire and cable, and custom overmolded cable assemblies to the oil and gas, marine, defense, and transit industries. Contact:  Teledyne Cable Solutions, 9215 Premier Row Dallas, TX 75247   |   (214) 637-1381|  E-mail: [email protected]   |  www.teledynecablesolutions.com
 
Seismic
Teledyne Marine Seismic, comprised of AG Geophysical, Bolt, Real Time Systems, and Geophysical Instruments, supplies the world’s marine seismic fleets with high-quality ruggedized submersible connectors, seismic energy sources, seismic source management systems, and complex hydrophone systems for defense, seismic survey, and other marine market applications. We also provide instrumentation engineered for reliable performance in the harshest of ocean conditions. Contact:  Teledyne Marine Seismic, 5825 Chimney Rock Road, Houston, TX 77081   |   +1 713-666-2561|  E-mail: [email protected]
 
 
(As published in the July/August 2016 MTR100 edition of Marine Technology Reporter)

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