For someone who works with manufacturers to solve their production problems, Dave Evans sure likes breaking things. These days, that means breaking up dated procurement networks or stagnant business models. But his love of manufacturing and engineering started with more literal destruction. “I was about five years old, and I had a hammer in my hand. I came inside and I said, ‘Mom, I fixed your car.’ She comes out and there’s just dents all over the red Suburban,” Evans says of his first memory of why he wanted to be an engineer. “So, I think since the age of five, I’ve been building and breaking things.” That urge for creative destruction led to an engineering degree from Stanford University and a job at Ford Motor Co. as the first employee at its Silicon Valley Lab in 2012. After a few years there, he and his brother cofounded Fictiv, a procurement system for engineered fabricated parts. Japanese automation and procurement company Misumi bought Fictiv last year, and in January, it named Evans president and CEO of its Misumi Americas division. “Very, very few founders and CEOs stay on to actually manage transitions,” Evans says. “So, I think that this has been a very bold risk for Misumi as a Japanese company to have a U.S. national be their first corporate officer in the largest, most important region for the group company.” Best Job in the World The coolest thing about manufacturing, for Evans, is how specialized and complicated it can get. Every device that people use has a massive supply chain supporting it, making the buttons people press or the dials they turn. Getting to work with manufacturers on their supply chain issues is a treat because Evans says he gets to see the inside story about parts and products that most people wouldn’t notice. “I have the best job in the world because we get to see all the innovation,” Evans explains. “I feel like I’m living in a ‘Jetsons’ cartoon. We work with nuclear fusion; we work with humanoid (robots); we work with satellites; we work with surgical robots. And that’s really just an incredible profession to have and to be a part of.” The great thing about all of those products is that they’re cool. The difficult part is the precise engineering required, especially for components with a lot size of one. Evans says his love of difficult problems makes him well suited to those sorts of orders. “How do you deliver a highly engineered made-to-order configured product in 24 hours? I think most would be blown away at the innovation it takes so that when someone clicks a few boxes on our website – you can take a shaft and customize the whole thing – a part number spits out, you order it, and it’s on your desk the next day,” Evans says. “And we do that for 80 sextillion options. I didn’t know what a sextillion was, but it’s a billion trillion. That’s what we do to run our business every day.” He adds that Misumi has perfected low-volume, high mix production since its founding in 1963 (Misumi USA followed in 1988). The company’s minimum order quantity? One unit. “The supply chain and manufacturing infrastructure we’ve built from Asia to North America and truly globally, to deliver that little shaft – that $20 part to your desk right away – it’s pretty remarkable,” Evans says. “So, if you see me on the floor at IMTS or anywhere else, buy me a beer, and I’ll tell you all about how we get that done.” Exciting Time for Manufacturing Going to school and living in Silicon Valley, Evans says he hears a lot of hype about software, but to him, the most exciting new technologies are physical. Software innovations are great, but he says the next great chapter in the story of technology is going to be coming from factories, not computer labs. “We've been in the most explosive and fastest-growing period for maybe the last three to four decades in the physical world of things that are built,” Evans says. “A lot of the smartest minds are asking, 'How are physical products made, and how will it change in the world around us?’ As you think about the next five to 10 years, we will literally build the innovation of tomorrow. All the future, it’s going to happen here today.” When Misumi named Evans its U.S. leader early this year, the company called out the need for an AI-driven implementation of the merger of Misumi and Fictiv. Evans says artificial intelligence promises revolutionary change in manufacturing, but it won’t be easy. “If I go back to my days at Ford building dashboards, it’s a very complex problem. It touches a lot of people and is highly engineered, but mostly still built on a Microsoft suite of Excel, PowerPoint, and e-mail. That’s how a lot of the glue was put together to ship the F-150…. Most manufacturers still run on Excel and manual workflows.” AI, he says, will automate many of the redundant or manual tasks to allow craftsmen to focus on what they know how to do instead of logging work or emailing updates. “AI, when applied in the right way, can really be transformative to unlock creativity. At Misumi, we’re doing this every day in the way that we do our quotation, material selection, vendor management, scheduling, and warehouse automation. AI is really pervasive across our business, and I have a lot of hope for how it impacts our industry as well,” Evans says. The World According to Dave Evans Big challenges equal exciting opportunities, and Evans’ greatest desire is to get young people excited about what’s in store for manufacturing. “I want you to read on [my] gravestone, ‘We made manufacturing sexy and attractive, so the next generation wants to do it.’ That we transformed it from something that was my grandfather’s or uncle’s generation to one where the smartest minds say, ‘I want to work with my hands, I want to solve physical problems, and I want to work on cutting-edge technology,’” Evans says. “I’m a very young leader. I like to think I bring a lot of energy to our team every day in what we do. And I really hope to help inspire that next generation.” Visit Misumi (IMTS booth #236650) at IMTS 2028 and learn how you can move your team from concept to production faster.

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