Case Study: a major aerospace and defense manufacturer builds a scalable painter talent pipeline with Draup

World's Largest Aerospace and Defense Manufacturer builds a 400,000-worker painter pipeline with Draup

The world's largest aerospace and defense manufacturer faced a structural shortage of certified aircraft painters, with a national talent pool of only 5,200 workers unable to meet its production demands. This was compounded by fragmented competition and complex entry barriers. Draup was engaged to provide talent intelligence to address this critical challenge.

Draup identified and sized four adjacent labor pools totaling 400,000 workers, designing specific conversion pathways for each. The solution included activating a high-quality military pipeline using the DoD SkillBridge program and benchmarking competitor strategies. As a result, the organization shifted from a constrained "buy" mindset to a scalable "build" strategy, gaining access to a vastly larger talent pool and clarifying its competitive positioning for securing this specialized workforce.