Ken Blemel

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  portland.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2007/05/07 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 5/4/2007    Last Visited: 1/30/2008  

  Most important, it predicts problems before they happen, says Ken Blemel, MSI's vice president of research and development.
  
  MSI has received $1 million so far for the FCS contract, although it expects to receive up to $10 million over the next few years.
  
  In contrast to the FCS contract -- which is for new combat vehicles -- the NAVAIR contract is to retrofit aircraft that have been functioning for up to three decades or longer, Blemel says.
  
  "Our system will replace obsolete equipment from the 1970s, '80s, and '90s with miniaturized, computerized tools that do far more than the original flight recorders that they're replacing," Blemel says."The new technology is like having R2D2 on board.It will do everything R2D2 did in 'Star Wars,' except it doesn't move around."
  
  The system -- contained in tiny boxes that are much smaller and lighter than current flight recorders -- will monitor the aircraft propulsion system, record cockpit voices, take video images of flights and monitor the health of most other electric and mechanical systems on the planes.It also acts as a survivable crash box to preserve all data, Blemel says.
  
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  www.aaproceedings.utcdayton.com/pages/agenda.asp - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/6/2008    Last Visited: 9/16/2008  

  Presenter(s): Presenter(s): Mr Kenneth Blemel - Management Sciences Inc

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  www.avweb.com/eletter/archives/avflash/120.html - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/24/2003    Last Visited: 5/27/2007  

  "We're looking for things that tell you what's happening before it happens," MSI VP Kenneth G. Blemel told the Albuquerque Journal.

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  albuquerque.bizjournals.com/albuquerque/stories/2008/06 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 6/20/2008    Last Visited: 6/26/2008  

  Management Sciences President Kay Blemel and Vice President Kenneth Blemel with some of the test equipment that helped them re-invent the company.
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  Now, that development strategy is paying off big time with an open-ended, $25 million Navy contract to retrofit planes with "smart" wiring systems, and a $10 million Army-related contract to do the same for combat vehicles, says the company's Vice President of Research and Development, Ken Blemel.
  
  "SBIR grants have served us well," Blemel says."They helped us finance the research and development needed to build new products."
  
  It's been a long and winding road for the company, which formed in 1976 as a family operation run by Blemel, an engineer, and his wife, Kay.

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  ABQjournal: Building a Better Black Box - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 8/18/2003    Last Visited: 8/18/2003  

  "We're looking for things that tell you what's happening before it happens," said company vice president Kenneth G. Blemel."It's almost like artificial intelligence."After the twin tower attacks, the Navy asked for just such a sophisticated device, originally intended to beef up the information provided by a plane's so-called black box or flight recorder.MSI, which had already been working a similar project to replace outdated black boxes in commercial airlines, landed the $1.5 million Small Business Innovation Research contract to improve the traditional flight data recorder for use aboard Navy aircraft including the F-18 strike fighter.By 2004, the device should be ready for all government planes, Blemel said.The problem with flight recorders is that their main function has been to reveal what happens after a tragedy.The Navy was looking for a mechanism that could provide data in real time, he said.Management Sciences was able to develop technology that fits into a space no bigger that the black box but provides infinitely more data, Blemel said.The technology combines video, voice, data and a mission profile- a flight plan, for example- to allow commanders on the ground or a ship to track flights in progress.The technology can make periodic systems checks to make sure everything is operating properly.The new box in essence takes tasks now performed in five separate units and combines them into one, and adds new features that "monitor, diagnose and report in flight," according to the MSI Web site."Its purpose is to be a guardian angel," Blemel said.
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  "This technology is a big leap for us," Blemel said.The proposal was submitted to the Navy last summer "and they loved it," he said.Since the Navy's order was so large, however, there was no way the small company with just 17 full-time employees could fill the government's order alone.Besides, Blemel said, Management Sciences is more a research and development company than a manufacturer.That led the company into a cooperative agreement with a major company with local ties to mass-produce the device, which is stuffed into a metal container no bigger than a shoebox and insulated against extreme heat, such as a fire.The technology, Blemel said, has applications in many other areas, such as commercial planes, rescue vehicles and police and fire units."It can be used from the space shuttle to ships at sea," he said.The company has adapted the technology for home use through "smart-wiring," he said.
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  PRINCIPALS: Marlene and Kenneth BlemelPRODUCTS: Computer software and hardwareFOUNDED: 1976
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  -- Kenneth Blemel

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  Albuquerque Tribune Online - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 7/1/2002    Last Visited: 7/1/2002  

  "This facility will be very important for us," said Ken Blemel, vice president of MSI."If I really looked hard, I still couldn't find any companies I can tell to make large amounts of our wiring for us.Through this, we get a manufacturing and assembly outlet.They get economic development.It's really a wonderful opportunity."
  
  The company expects a major manufacturing contract of several million dollars from the military to come through by the end of the summer.
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  Once the technology is adopted by the military, a private market of several billion dollars could follow, Blemel said.
  
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  The schools could help intricate Native American crafts skills be translated into the high-tech skills needed for the facility, Blemel said.
  
  "If you look at wiring real close it actually looks like braids," he said."There are actually already two wiring plants on the reservations that make wiring.We want to do basically the same thing, but put smarts into it."
  
  The workers would braid microsystems into the wiring in much the same way stones are set into jewelry.

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  Albuquerque Tribune Online - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 3/26/2002    Last Visited: 3/26/2002  

  Business couldn't be better, said MSI Vice President Ken Blemel.
  
  "September 11 has just totally taken sensors to the ultimate level," Blemel said."The world has changed.People want to be aware of what's happening around them 24/7, and they can do that with sensors.It's changed our future and the future of all sensor companies.Now it gets interesting."
  
  Many sensor companies have had orders pouring in from the military and private sector, which want to use their products to monitor such things as airports, plane and ship wiring, information systems and public buildings, Blemel said.
  
  Management Sciences's biggest contract - a $1.5 million Phase II Small Business Innovative Research grant from Naval Air Systems Command - was awarded earlier this month.Through the grant, MSI will build a better, smarter black box.
  
  "In the past, flight data recorders - black boxes - were used just when things crashed," Blemel said."Until that crash, though, they don't serve much of a purpose.So, some admiral looked at this and said, `There must be a better way.' They want a box that does that final recording, but also one that they can ask questions of from the ground."
  
  The Management Sciences box, called a Digital Data Download or D3, uses computers and tiny smart sensors - about the width of a human hair - integrated throughout an airplane that constantly monitor all of its systems.
  
  People on the ground can ask the plane, in flight, how key systems are functioning.
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  "It performs a game we like to call `thinking,'" Blemel joked."If a rule gets broken, it tells people about it."
  
  Through the contract, MSI will provide the first D3 boxes for Navy F-18 fighters in about 18 months.The military wants eventually to integrate the boxes into all of its 15,000 aircraft, Blemel said.
  
  MSI has an agreement with Honeywell to subcontract some of the manufacturing.Honeywell has a long history of building traditional black boxes, and plans to sell D3 boxes to commercial entities, Blemel said.
  
  "They're like our big brother," Blemel said."We do military sales and they may give us a cut from the commercial world."
  
  The commercialization agreements haven't been fully worked out yet, he said.
  
  D3 boxes also would work for Navy ships, and MSI is developing a similar water-borne product, Blemel said.
  
  "You can think of a ship flying through water like a plane flies through air," he said.
  
  MSI received another contract - a $100,000 Phase I SBIR - in December from the Navy Nav-C Systems Group to make a product called Smart Spaces.
  
  "It's our next big possibility," Blemel said."Its purpose is to relay data from alleys in the bowels of a ship.It can tell a computer or master site what's going on down below when a door opens."
  
  The system can instantly report to a D3 or other monitoring system if a leak occurs or a key piece of machinery has broken down.
  
  The company hopes to get a Phase II SBIR by this fall to further develop and implement the product.
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  "It's basically an energy-gathering computer that can send signals by itself," Blemel said.
  
  The sensors will monitor munitions dumps to assure no problems - such as explosions - occur.It typically is expensive to bring power to the dumps, which are located in flat, remote areas.The MSI system reduces those costs.
  
  In February, the company received another $100,000 Phase I SBIR from the Federal Aviation Administration to build a smart system that will monitor damage to wiring insulation in airplanes.The system uses wave energy - ultrasound or radar - to monitor power flowing through wiring.
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  "Our purpose is to detect chafing before it eats through to the wire," Blemel said.
  
  The company this year was nominated to the New Mexico Flying 40 for the fourth consecutive time.Revenues were about $2 million last year, and Blemel said he expects about $3 million in revenues this year.
  
  "A lot of our work has to do with positioning for a bigger end game," he said."We're heading further down the road to commercialization.Then we'll deal less with grants and more with sales and revenues.We'll have to make an economic decision whether to build or outsource."
  
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  Blemel said the contracts could bode well for New Mexico electronics companies that do production for MSI.
  
  "In general we feel outsourcing manufacturing locally is a good thing to do," he said."In New Mexico we need more small widget makers, and when we've gone out of state, it's because we haven't found anyone local to partner with."
  
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  Albuquerque Tribune Online - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 12/11/2001    Last Visited: 12/11/2001  

  The company, which makes smart sensor systems, just received two new Small Business Innovative Research grants of about $1.6 million, and Vice President Ken Blemel says business couldn't be better.
  
  "I don't know where the bad economy is," Blemel said."We're in the right place.Everything we're working on plays an important part in the post-Sept.11 economy, and we're hoping to spread that wealth in New Mexico."
  
  One of the company's main products is a series of smart-wiring harnesses and wireless guardian networks for aircraft that can detect leaks, corrosion and other mechanical problems and schedule maintenance before a failure occurs.Management Sciences is working on a deal to make the harnesses at a facility in Western New Mexico.
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  "The difference is black boxes - which are usually red - have been tombstone systems that record about 20 minutes of flight data," Blemel said."They're useful for those 20 minutes of data and otherwise they're dead.There are other recording systems, two to four unique ones, in all aircraft.Our box will replace all of those and more, and it will monitor systems constantly."
  
  The box uploads current data to a satellite system, which relays it to ground-based air controllers.It can schedule maintenance, monitor the cargo hold, wing flaps and even provide information about the cargo.
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  "The purpose of this is to know exactly what's happening by data linking to an aircraft from the ground," Blemel said."If there were a terrorist, you could find out exactly what's happening in the cockpit right away.This is a pretty big market.The world has finally decided this kind of security is important."
  
  Data from the boxes could also be used to enhance military flight simulations.If a plane crashed during a difficult flight, other pilots could feed the information into a simulator, discover the cause and practice to prevent future crashes, Blemel said.
  
  The company, which is developing the system with Honeywell, plans to have flight demonstrations of the product by about July 2003.It hopes to start selling the systems for commercial and military aircraft soon after, Blemel said.
  
  Management Sciences also received a $100,000 SBIR grant from Naval Sea Systems Command to develop a "smart spaces" system with the Washington state division of Battelle Corp. and Connecticut-based General Dynamic Electric Boats.
  
  "The concept of smart spaces is that a centralized data station would report information from all other places nearby, such as a station at the top deck of a ship reporting things about all the decks below," Blemel said.
  
  Unlike a camera surveillance system, the smart spaces system monitors and analyzes the data.It issues warnings before failures occur and can schedule maintenance to prevent them.It could also report suspicious activity, Blemel said.
  
  "These are artificial intelligence systems that use rule bases that worry.Essentially they're worry systems," Blemel said."We're excited because it means smart hospital systems, prisons, airports.Can you imagine what this means after Sept. 11?To know who's been messing with your food systems, back doors, gates and what they did?"
  
  The system could also reduce the crews of warships, saving money and potential injuries or deaths during war, he added.

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  Contact Management Sciences - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/10/2007    Last Visited: 9/10/2007  

  Vice President: Kenneth G. Blemel ken blemel@mgtsciences.com

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  DAWNBREAKER®: Success Stories - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 1/1/2002    Last Visited: 6/15/2008  

  "The CAP process provided an excellent framework for going through the rigor to develop the business and financial plans with spreadsheets that are the basis for venture capital or bank investments", says MSI Vice President, Ken Blemel."Expert business consultants provided the mentoring and instructions for developing business and financial plans and helped in performing market research", says Mr. Blemel.

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