James Smejkal with CAP Logistics

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

reliability, outage, industrial, company, unplanned outages, customers, james, understand, unit, Logistics, plan, conversation, cap, assets, podcast, clientele, headache, maintenance, part, talk

00:00

Scott. Welcome to the Industrial Talk Podcast with Scott MacKenzie. Scott is a passionate industry professional dedicated to transferring cutting edge industry focused innovations and trends while highlighting the men and women who keep the world moving. So put on your hard hat, grab your work boots and let's go. Hello everyone.

00:21

Thank you very much for joining Industrial Talk, and thank you for your continued support of this platform that is dedicated to you, industrial professionals all around the world. Yes, I say it all the time. You're bold, brave, you dare greatly. You are changing lives, and therefore are changing the world each and every day we have in the hot seat today, James Mickle, he is the Vice President of Sales and Marketing at CAP Logistics, and we're going to be talking take note, paper and pencil. We're going to be talking about asset management, reliability, the proper planning and how it interacts with your supply chain. It's a mouthful, but it is a must. Let's get cracking. Yeah, so I've had, you know, you know, I have a lot of conversations around asset management, reliability, maintenance and then some, but this is an interesting avenue that must be a part of your conversation, of course, and that is, how do we integrate this uptime and this these solutions to improve your reliability and avoid those downtimes. But if those downtimes do come, which they do, we're just, you know, we're humans, but when they do, you want to get back up and running as quickly as you possibly can. These are the strategies that you need to have in your back pocket. Now I'm not saying that you do not plan, because planning is so vitally important that you don't install those assets so where they have the best opportunity to succeed. I'm not I'm not saying that you got to do that. Sometimes things just happen. But you want to be able to up your Logistics, your supply chain gain, so that you are covered throughout all aspects of that PF curve. That's what James is talking about. Before we get into that conversation, I want to be able to just put a plug in call to action, if you have a podcast, if you have technology, if you have something that you need to say and you need to amplify it, Industrial Talk is here for you. You want to put it out on Industrial Talk. It is a platform, and the listeners and the supporters are industrial. They are all in they're into the manufacturing, oil and gas mining, Logistics, of course, and everything else in between, technology, it's all there. You want to amplify your message, you have a podcast. Stick it on Industrial Talk, and let's let's help you be successful. That's what Industrial Talk is all about. We're all about education, collaboration, and, of course, innovation each and every day. Let's get on with conversation. James Smejkal, his stat card out on LinkedIn, is impressive. Let's just say that Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Cap Logistics, great company, great people. Let's get cracking. James, welcome to Industrial Talk. How are you doing today?

03:28

Fantastic. Scott, great to be on site with you. What's

03:31

the weather like in call? Are you in Colorado?

03:34

I'm in Houston, where it's never mind. Yeah, it's 100 and 100 degrees when there's a humidity. Yeah, right

03:42

outside of New Orleans, I understand the weather all too well. In Houston, it's the same you know, the the stepchild of Houston didn't

03:54

think it like that. But, yeah,

03:56

it's the same weather.

03:57

Yeah, same weather. It's on the Gulf Coast, sticky, hot,

04:02

but you gotta admit that August was not that, not as challenging as it been in the past. Let's take

04:09

that's a positive. Absolutely. Don't ruin that by saying that.

04:14

Well, I figure September is coming, so I figure I can at least get a couple of hot days of August, and then, you know, we'll see. All right, before we get into the conversation, give us a little background on who James is.

04:29

I am President James Smejkal, and I am a Vice President CAP Logistics, and been with capital justice for 28 years. What I started here when I was 12 years old. 20 28 years that's correct.

04:45

Are you freaking kidding me? I didn't

04:46

know that. No, it's, it's, it's a great story, because when I graduated college, I was going to go to law school, and I took a year off and wanted to do something before I went to law school to make sure it was a red. Choice I made, and cap was hired. I can do sales for a year. They hire me capitalistic so gone to CAP Logistics, and a year went by, and here we are, 20 years later. So

05:14

now listener, I know James. We've had some interactions before, at some conferences and all that good stuff and I didn't know that. How about that? Well,

05:24

it's, it's, it's unheard of in this industry, especially. But you don't hear more about that every day, like yeast see number one in transportation, for example. It's unheard of, if you're talking about the average, like 10 year or they're gone after a year. So just a lot of our company, how we hire? We hire the best, you know, for the long term. So yeah,

05:47

see, I like that. That's cool. And that's cap Logistics. Tell us a little bit about what cap does.

05:54

Well, first of all, we are a first class transportation firm, and again, with our average tenure. Just love our company, and we specialize in offering solutions to our customers that are losing money, they're down, and we're available 24 hours a day, but our goal is to give them a customized solution to using CAP Logistics that's going to save them money and time and make your job so much easier.

06:24

So how does that differ from other Logistics companies? Great

06:29

question. So we take a totally different approach. We look at our technology, it's it's our anchor. So this is made in house through our IT team, which is a big group, I would say it's in comparison to some of your fortune, 500 companies. But we have a strong group with our technology, and we base our services around that, with our operation staff and sales. And it's all about understanding our customers. We want to be a employee at our client's office, or office down the hall, where we know what's going on with that company. We know what their product is. We know what the applications are. We know why they are the best of what they do, or help them in that aspect as well. But whenever we're doing business with our clientele. We understand that when we leave that Doc, we are, we are actually part of that company, and have an attitude in mind. And yes, it's impossible to know everything about a company to be an employee there, when you work for cap, but if you have that mentality and understanding of it, it's it's excellent because we do a lot of research, and having the research upfront impresses our clientele. So, see,

07:47

that's interesting, because you're, you sort of talk a little bit about Logistics as a service. You know, they have software as a service now, Logistics as a service, where you, you provide that marquee type of solution, but, I mean, you deal with the headaches, but that's what I hear you saying. It's like, it's a little bit more. It's like you're having conversations with me. If I was a company that needed solutions such as being provided by cap, then you would have that conversation with me, and you'd find those areas of maybe some inefficiencies, maybe some opportunities too, and be able to work that through, right? So we do

08:28

also is, we tend to actually meet with new customers, or if it's if it's a great fit for us, we do a lot of research prior to actually contacting these, these our new customers, our potential new customers, doing that research and asking the questions that we ask really impresses them, and we don't tend to offer a meeting or a a solution. So after maybe two meetings of just answering questions, and that says a lot about who we are, because on that first meeting, most salespeople want to ask for the business in that first meeting, we don't our goal is to learn about the company, know their pain points, and understand how we can fit, and maybe it's not a good fit, and we'll be honest with them. But what's really important is for our clientele, we have hub groups. So hub groups are assigned to these accounts to get to understand their business, as we're talking about with that mentality, and to give them that personal service where they can know by name Josh or Jim, how's it going? Obviously been going here. So over hand this account for five years, 10 years, 20 years, she gets know the ins and outs of the company. At times you know more than the clientele itself. So by hand that ship, handling that account every day, and talking to various people in all sorts of areas of the country, international, worldwide. Again, it's a great learning experience for ops people,

09:51

yeah, and it seems, I mean, it's critical to their let's say I was some sort of industry, and it would be critical to my business. Business and and critical in many ways, outside of the fact that I don't want headaches. I want, I want whatever product that I need delivered or received in a timely manner, because I don't want to be down. I just, you know, whatever might be or Mike, my customers need the product yesterday. And and I need, I need some certainty that that that'll take place, is that sort of in the wheelhouse for cap, absolutely.

10:28

We are here to make you look we're here to make your life easier. We offer also the value adds of, you know, free training on eco terms, HTS codes on these podcasts, for example, we try to be different every way, and we're pushing the envelope. So when you're an employee at cap, and you have people that have been here forever because they love their jobs, because we treat our employees very well. So when you get up in the morning, and we're doing cool things that no one has done before in this industry, so we're always trying to push the envelope. So when you give in the morning you come to work, you're pretty excited about what you're going to see. You know, when you think you've seen everything, you see something new. So makes it very challenging, but also very interesting as well.

11:12

Yeah, but see, you've been a part of cap for 28 years, so you've seen a lot,

11:17

quite a bit. And again, just not seen it all. You think you see it all. Yes, he's seen before so but that's

11:24

industry today. Industry today is is very dynamic. Things are changing rapidly. Everybody is trying to look for that bottom line value of being able to stay in business, to to have some sort of competitive advantage, so on and so forth. And I think it's even more hyper, hyper competitive nowadays than ever before, just because of all of the stuff that's taking place. He agree

11:50

totally agree with you. I think with AI and new ways of doing business on technology, I think it's changing the game. I think it's going to change the game for the good in the future as well. But we have a lot of things, capping and on gas, for example, with all hydrogen and all the renewables, etc. So trying to keep up pace with that, because that's that's coming very fast, very quick. And we'll be attending the actual large conference. It's the outage conference for outages, and it's in Calgary, pretty much you have the experts there from all over the world that know their business. And now it's on, you know, best practices on up time, best practices on maintenance, best practices on everything you can think of to not be down. So we'll be a part of that. I'll be a actual speaker at the conference, and looking forward to meeting everybody there to learn, to learn and kind of share the same experiences for us to get better and offers to our clientele. Yeah.

12:53

So this conference is focused on shutdowns, turnarounds, outages, whatever. What topic are you talking on?

13:06

Talking on, actually downtime and also reliability, which we'll go over today as well.

13:11

Well, talk to us. That's the segue into that conversation. So tell us a little bit about what that subject that you're going to be chirping on at that event, sure.

13:21

Well, it's going to be on, on the outages and having a plan, and we'll go over that later. I don't want to spoil much for the conference, but as of late, what we've been we're always trying to learn new ways and hear what people are doing to help on the reliability factor, to keep them up and running. And this topic we'll be talking about today is about unplanned outages, and how you can maximize your time on plant outages to help that spend or help with the unplanned outages, not currently so, by spending more time during the planning on those assets that are very important to the plant refinery, doing the work up front there, on the monitoring, on the condition that it's in to track it can be done during the plane outage, to keep you where you're up and running and not down on plane outage. We'll talk more about that. And half that is on reliability. Half that is on how you measure each unit. So we'll go through that.

14:23

So the use case, the scenario that that I want to highlight is that I have a I have a planned outage. So whatever that might be, I'm doing a lot of work up front. I'm making sure that I have this part, this part, this kidded, this thing, and doing everything that I possibly can up front and have it there when I needed to be there, not something before or after, but right at the right time. And a part of that too is with that outage, I'm going to also look at other pieces of equipment that might not be a part of the overall scope of the outage, but I'm going to look at. That equipment as well, and I'm going to assess the health of it, I should have some idea, but maybe I should do a little bit more in depth assessment of those assets. It's probably at that time when maybe, just maybe, there might be a situation where that asset is beginning to show some signs of degradation, correct that, to me, would be where cap would shine. Well, wouldn't you absolutely

15:28

because if we know kind of what's going to be happening at a time, more notice helps us out quite a bit. And if we get the heads up that, hey, we need to change this out the next two, three months, that'll help us get a plan together, where it's coming from, overseas or across country, whatever it might be. But I think the unlike factor on this is also when there are unplanned outages. Why are unplanned outages occurring right now? It could be for a variety of different factors, but it's all about their plan and reliability. I think two thirds, I believe, of most industrial companies out there experiencing plant outages every month, which is

16:10

you just, you just sort of chirped out a stat, two thirds of companies experience some sort of an

16:17

outage. Two thirds of industrial industrial companies and incur a unplanned outage every month at the front door. Yeah, once a month on average, and the average on that could cost one, 100 $125,000 per hour. It can be a lot more. Could be a lot less. Some recent examples of this that that we just experienced is, you know, for example, unplanned outage on a well. It's upstream company based in Texas, and they had a well that was down. And I'm going from hours into minutes here, because I think going doing that kind of helps try translate what or how important, or how critical, or how mind blowing this is, is you're talking about losing $20,000 per minute on a well being down.

17:05

No way, 20 grand $1,000

17:07

well being per minute, per minute, okay, that's That was shocking to me. I've never seen an amount that large. But and then we there was a customer that was down on the pulp and paper side, one engine and very large company where they have all the paper mills throughout the south and one engine at one of the biggest plants was controlling everything. And I went down. And when that occurred, they were not losing as much as old gas company, but it really falls in line that not having that reliability structure in place for your for your assets, that could cause the unplanned outages. And most these companies are using a actually, where they it's all reactive or it's going to fail. When using that, it your unplanned allergies percentage goes up. And I think that's the biggest thing that we're seeing is there's still a lot of companies out there using that run to fail type of maintenance to use for their plants or firings, which means they're going to have 80% more of the unplanned outages. So on reliability, just to just kind of stay on track here. I think it all depends based on your reliability structure and your plan. Yeah. Now half, half of the industrial oil gas out there use a time base type of method where they can pace, and then a third of the customers probably use the actual where they can try to predict, you know, the maintenance by the current how it's operating, if it's operating to full, Max, not to bring it correctly, etc. And then 21% or so it would take still use the run to fail, which is amazing to me. So when, when you use that strategy, it raises your chances of just

19:02

Yeah, but you hope that these companies do a little analysis on their asset base and saying, Okay, this motor is more important than that motor. We're going to deploy some reliability strategies around this more important motor versus this motor, and be able to manage it that way. We're going to put a device out on there, or we're going to put some we're going to go visit it once a week, or whatever it might be, and and do some analysis on those assets. You would think that that would be the case, especially today. Come on, if it's, it's not, it's not voodoo science here. I mean, it's it's it makes sense.

19:43

It's all about having a plan. And you'll hear that from me on every on every podcast on any speeds about planning. Having a plan in place will help with not having a plan. Just having a great plan outage is. As much as you can, and having a plan in place is also critical. But also we can ID some of the actual units at the refinery, for example, that we may realize that, for example, if XYZ refinery had a hydrocracker unit on site, a actual vdu unit, where they have to kind of refine the heavier oils using higher heat and the actual diesel hydro treating, and then quite critical, which is on the CDU unit, which also uses high temperature to take crude and blend it and separate it into various types of fuels. So when we look at those type of units that are on site at a refinery, we know there's going to be downtime, because on these hydrocracking units are usually managed between three and five years, depending on their age. But it's that gives us a good indication of what could be happening, worst case scenario, with unplanned and plan average.

20:58

So here's here's a scenario. Ideally you would like to have these conversations up front, if I'm if you're all around about the plan, be able to for these, for these shutdowns, turnarounds, whatever outages you would like to be a part of the conversation and be able to plan the Logistics, the supply chain component associated with that. Let's just sort of go more macro, yeah, but in the scenario where it's 20 grand a minute, is it, it's just easy for me, if it's, if it's my money and my financial hit, to just call cap and say, go over here, grab it, bring it out to Timbuktu. And you know, we'll have a team of individuals to install it as fast as you possibly can manage

21:52

correct and all that is being is calling, texting, email over, communicating via the phone, knowing who's involved. And again, it's that first meeting where we have a preage meeting, which will quite stop that process there, but having the right people involved in that meeting, especially when you're going to monitor the units, that maintenance engineer has to make sure that he understands on site, what are the key units are so important, is so critical. This require, that's one that's the most important thing. Yeah, and what I've been saying, but talking to our clients, as we're talking about AI and just like technology coming up by having a a actually technique and process of on the testing and measurement of the unit or the asset will go far beyond and it's been factually proven that if you do this, it will create your chances of unplanned outage by half. So yeah, can be those numbers at all, and we'll go through that real quick, because on testing and actually measurement, on the IT and on the just like technology side with advancing every year, they're coming up with new ways to track assets, whether it be on the vibration, etc, on the power output, input, but knowing your key critical units on site is key, and knowing what engineers need to do during a plan outage, if they do the work during a plan outage, and understanding how the unit's dealing, what's current state of it, where it's going to be, etc, they can Understand when they can replace it or not, or do thin. And then again, that's been proven to show that, using this using this accuracy, using the testing, using all the measurements, it reduces unplanned downtime.

23:55

Yeah, and the diagnostic equipment is getting better and better all the time. And then, of course, you start to infuse AI into the ability to be able to take a tsunami of data and be able to flip out some, you know, questionable data as helps immensely. And for you reliability and asset management professionals out there, I think James is really talking to the PF curve in the where the where Logistics needs to be a part of it. And I can honestly say throughout that PF Curt logistic needs to be in the beginning and at the end. There's no other way of getting around it, and to be able to have a partner in such a way that you don't want that headache. You want somebody that can deliver and be on top of the challenges that you're dealing with. Does that make sense? Total

24:45

sense. It's all about having planned meeting green posts and understanding what went right what went wrong, and so we can improve on the next adage, if it's unplanned outage, we can pivot. That's what makes us really good at what. We do because we started business 1982 in the Rocky Mountain region, doing hot shots of the mountains with no addresses, just GPS coordinates or map directions. So since our inception, 1982 we've been doing this. So we have a lot of customers right now, and downstream, upstream, in the midstream, where they're at the middle of nowhere without addresses and a lot. There are a lot of companies that have trouble with maps and directions, but pretty easy for us, as we've been doing it for quite a while. So International, international, worldwide, and also domestic. We are fully both global shipments and also the United States, North America, South America, etc, globally.

25:44

Sounds like a no brainer. James, how do people get a hold of you? If they want to say, I want to know more about CAP Logistics, I want to be able to connect with James. Are you out on LinkedIn?

25:54

I'm on LinkedIn. Please. Please ask any questions. I'm here to offer any services, and doesn't have to be where we're handling your phrase. It could be any questions that's based on this podcast. So anything that that you're able to ask me and ask my help, I can learn and offer that help for you. And that's what that's what we do. We like to help customers and customers and people that can help us with knowledge of how we can pass on best practices to our customers. All

26:23

right. Listener, you need to connect with James. It is a priority that is your to do list. Reach out, find out more. I get a sense that you wouldn't try to hit me over the head with sales literature and all that stuff. Would you be just talk to me. Just talk to me.

26:41

Just talk to you. Because we're, you know, we look at ourselves and not salespeople or a actually coming based on sales, but we are more because we're taking this approach of trying to know the internal aspects of all of our clientele, especially something like this, knowing what's what each unit does at each refinery time, and we are more as a consultant, more than a sales rep. So as I mentioned earlier, we'll go to these clients for the first time, possible clients, and we'll do research to see if we've done our research prior to it. We'll do the internal research with with our clientele. That could be new and it might not be a good fit, it could be a great fit. But during that research meeting, they get to say, Wow, you haven't sold to me once today. Wow. I'm like, we have to make sure this is the right fit for you not. Yeah, they respect the heck out of that, because, unfortunately, a lot of people don't like salespeople, so, but we take more of an approach where we're not going to put you in a corner. We're going to ask questions. We want to understand what your problems and solutions are, pain points, etc. Yeah. And then if there's anything I can learn from you, or for anyone on this that's listening to this through LinkedIn, I'd be happy to give you a call back and hear it and talk about it. So love talking about this type of stuff. I like it.

28:01

I like it. It's a noisy world out there. I need some clarity. I need some insights. I need I need trusted individuals that can handle something that's pretty complex, not easy, but be able to say, to take that headache off my, my, my plate. Let's put it that way. All right, listeners, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. We're gonna have all the contact information for James out on Industrial Talk, reach out. That's your call to action. All right, we will be right back. You're

28:26

listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

28:35

Yeah, that's James. Here's your call to action. One you need to reach out to him, go out to Industrial Talk, find his link to his LinkedIn stat card, connect with him, have a conversation. You will not be disappointed. That's one two. You need to up your Logistics and supply chain game in the world of asset management, reliability and, of course, maintenance, you need trusted Sherpas to be able to help you along with that journey, to ensure that you are one up, up and running, and then when those times do come that you get up and running as fast as you possibly can, very important, make that happen starts with connecting with James. All right, you have a podcast. Put it out on Industrial Talk. You have technology that you want to amplify. Put it out on Industrial Talk. It is there for you that platform wants you to succeed, and we are a part of an ever expanding ecosystem that is dedicated to you. Be bold. Be brave. There greatly. Hang out with James. Change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly.