America can't rebuild manufacturing by focusing only on the final assembly line. The deeper problem is the industrial layer underneath it: castings, forgings, tooling, materials, equipment, process control, and the skilled workforce that knows how to make hard parts. Those capabilities are easy to overlook until aircraft are grounded, production programs stall, or critical components can only be sourced from overseas.

Cameron Schiller argues that reindustrialization has to start at that foundational layer. As the CEO and founder of Rangeview, he is building a Southern California foundry focused on highly specialized investment castings, including nickel-based superalloys and structural components.

In this conversation, we look at why castings and forgings have become a national capacity problem, how digital tooling can remove months of delay from complex casting programs, and why rebuilding American manufacturing means rebuilding the systems, skills, and factory infrastructure that make everything else possible.

What You'll Discover In This Episode

Why final assembly is only one part of reindustrialization

How castings and forgings became a hidden capacity constraint

Why foundry knowledge has become a generational handoff problem

How digital tooling changes the casting timeline

Where supply chain risk hides inside the equipment layer

What it takes to rebuild hard industrial capability in America

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About the Guest

Cameron Schiller is the CEO and founder of Rangeview, a Southern California company focused on rebuilding American foundry capacity through highly specialized investment castings. Rangeview works on high-value castings, including nickel-based superalloys, VIM melt, and structural components, with a focus on difficult parts, fast iteration, commercialization, and scaling production timelines. Cameron founded the company out of the same family garage where he grew up building robots, and his background as a roboticist and manufacturing operator has shaped Rangeview's approach to automation, digital tooling, materials science, and factory systems. His work is focused on bringing advanced manufacturing capacity back to the United States and building the next generation of American foundries.

Alex Krutz is the Former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Manufacturing at the U.S. Commerce Department and the Managing Director at Patriot Industrial Partners, an Industrial Advisory firm.

Alex and his team partner with growth-oriented companies to improve their operational, quality and financial performance, drawing on decades of experience in complex problem solving, factory optimization, and supply chain optimization initiatives.

Alex has earned the nickname "The Factory Doctor" from industry executives, analysts and media due to spearheading many manufacturing and supply chain turnarounds. Alex has completed over 250+ industrial performance improvement projects and manufacturing turnarounds around the globe in USA, Mexico, Canada, UK, Italy, France, South Africa, South Korea, Malaysia, Japan and India.

You can find Alex's Op-Ed articles that are featured in industry-leading publications, including Washington Times, Forbes, Aviation Week and Flight Global. He has also been cited in major media outlets, such as Wall Street Journal, Reuters, CNBC, among others. He has contributed to prominent conferences and webinars organized by Bank of America, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, and other institutions.

Resources

Have a project that can benefit from Alex's expertise?

Alex and his team at Patriot Industrial Partners work with growth-oriented organizations to raise their operational, quality and financial performance, drawing on decades of experience in complex problem solving, factory optimization, and due diligence.

Visit TheFactoryDoctor.com to learn more about private consulting and to request a Discovery Call.