Jason Waxman and Ankush Malhotra with Fluke

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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 get

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right once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk. And thank you, thank you so much for your support. We're building a platform, a platform that celebrates industry professionals all around the world. You know why? You know why I say it all the time, because you're bold, you're brave, you're daring, greatly you collaborate, you're solving problems. And of course, you're making my life better, which is important for me. That's, that's the selfish side. As you can tell by the buzz buzz in the background, we are at Xcelerate 23 Fluke Reliability is the company, it is a great conference, and right off the bat, right off the bat, you put this on your calendar, if you're not here, you're missing out. And if you're a reliability or asset manager, and you're all passionate about maintenance, put this on your calendar, you will not be disappointed. All right, in the hot seat. We have two. That's a twofer. We have a gentleman by the name of Jason. And another one. You might have heard it on cush. Let's get a cracking. Yeah. Welcome, guys.

01:19

Thanks for having us. Thank you.

01:21

It's great. I was excited. I'm all into this. So you guys having a good conference? Come on, you've got to admit, you gotta admit, this is pretty good. It's great. Because that's, you know, it's, it's well organized. The culture, the people, the Fluke individuals, it's I mean, it's just, it's all positive. And it's live. And it's live. It's happening now. See, right there.

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It took us three and a half years to do this again.

01:49

Can you believe that? I was so disappointed in 2022. Not to say that I will die. I was like, oh, you know, sad about the hurricane. But I was sad because I was like, gone it. wanted to, I wanted to get this going. But guys prevailed. And they pulled it off. And every. I mean, I've been up and down, up and down the hallway and talking to everybody and everybody 100% It's all backed up by data, data, that this has been a absolute plus, it's been great. Good job. Good job to your team. All right. Before we get a cracking on the conversation, I'm going to start with you, Jason. And it was a little background on who you are.

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Yeah. So I'm Jason Waxman. I'm the President at Fluke Corporation. We are a leader in testing measurement, ranging from Yes, calibration, to you know, connect your liability, which is why we're here today. Prior to coming to Fluke, about two years ago, I was with Intel for 23 years. Yeah.

02:50

I've never heard that. What are they all? Just kidding. All right. Give us a little background. I know that. We've already been down there. And we just need to get a little bit. Yeah,

02:57

Scott. Thanks. Thanks for having me here again. You know, so I've been with Fluke for over 16 years, variety of different roles. Currently, the President of Fluke Reliability, you know, we're here, really trying to help our customers, solve some of their pain problems and see how we can innovate to really help their journey on connected reliability.

03:19

Yeah, and if I had $1, every time somebody said, connected, digital transformation, the data analytics, you know, Edge cloud, whatever, I'd be a millionaire. But nonetheless, it's an important component, right? And it is changing all the time. It is a, a velocity that sort of is exciting from my perspective, but also sort of a little unnerving, because I'm sitting there thinking, Hey, who do I trust? Who do I Where do I start? Who do I trust? Where do I start? Because everybody's hanging shingles out there. So with that, as a sort of foundation, and what I like about Fluke Reliability is the simple fact that I know that I can contact Fluke reliability. And I can say, hey, this is in my head. I pulled it up on the worldwide web. And it says that I need to look into like digital transformation, makes Fluke, sort of very unique. In that sense. It's vertical. And I can you have, you have solutions, and you have individuals, people, human beings breathing, to be able to help. Can you take us on sort of that strategic? And I'm going to point to Jason, the strategic thinking behind all of that, because that's important.

04:34

Yeah, I mean, the strategic thinking just really starts with our customers. We spend a lot of time talking about workflows. And one of the things that's important in our culture is we don't sit in an office and kind of PowerPoint and draw on the board. We get out there and we spend dozens and dozens of hours just observing and watching what people are going through. And that's where it comes from. We get our people out there understanding like, what is it that we're trying to maintain? And what's the challenges in trying to keep that that infrastructure up and running? And then thinking about everything from? What's the hardware that's required to make that happen? How do you take data from that? And just it? How do you create a platform to be able to help customers manage it? And then the experience gap, right, there's an experience gap, and how do we even fill back with expertise and folks that we think about how we just serve our customers better really

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will touch upon that, that resource, that experience gap, because it is a common theme with all of the conversations that I've had. Okay, over to you on coach. So here we are. And I know that that I look out there, and I'm going, oh, yeah, I gotta I gotta do this. I gotta, I gotta be digitally transfer. I've got to think through it. So I come to Fluke reliability. And where do I start? What do I just say? Go? Hey, okay, good. Give me a 411. On, where do I start? Just helped me with that. What do you guys, what does Fluke Reliability bring to the table?

06:00

Yes. So I think you said, Scott, I think it starts with the people. I think we've got some fantastic people, be it our solution architects, or beta Customer Success teams. And really, the first thing they're going to do is really trying to understand what is the problem that you are trying dealing with? What are the challenges you have? Right? Where is it that you have your pain points? And I think that's where we start. It is not trying to fit in something that we have and see how does that fit into your, your, your workflow, it's really starting with what is the problem? You have a and then from there saying, Okay, is there a solution? Is there a service? Is there an expertise that we can bring, really tailor me to how we can help you in this journey of reliability? Right?

06:44

I'll tell you right now, that whole human component, and every conversation I've had is, is, you know, it's always gets down to trust. And on Cush, on on that human component. I've wandered around, I've looked at and talk to a many, many people within the Fluke family. How do you how do you continue to sort of motivate? How do you find that? How do you? How do you continue to say, Hey, um, my, our team is passionate. I need passion as a business owner, how do you how do you continue to motivate Fluke Reliability to Excel into that?

07:21

Yeah, it's a great question. I think we're fortunate that we have some really strong legacies, right? Fluke is a 75 year old company, Pruftechnik is a 50 year old company. emaint is a 20 plus year old company, and each one of them brought some really strong values and what's best about it? There's a lot of commonality in those values. But I think it starts with having a shared purpose, it starts with making sure that everyone is really focused on what's our vision, what's our mission? Where are we going? Once that is clear, get everyone's bought into it, then it's really making sure does everyone understand the role they play in trying to achieve that? Right? So I think that's how we broken this down. Do we have a clear shared purpose and vision? Does everyone understand the role they play? And then it's a little bit about our culture about continuous improvement? How do we get better little by little every day, and add value to ourselves and to our customers?

08:15

I gotta tell you, it's clear. Maybe I'm maybe I'm drinking the Kool Aid. But quite frankly, I think it's clear and I get that passion. Now to you, Jason brought up a couple of things one, email proof technic, and of course, you may protect me hang tight, there's a third one. Is it missing? I got II made proof technic got Fluke, of course. Yeah. Got it going? Oh, my gosh, I'm vapor lock in. But anyway, with from a strategic perspective, why was that important? Why was that whole acquisition strategy important for Fluke? A company?

08:57

Yeah. So thinking about back to our customers, you know, what we've largely done is supported customers and routine maintenance and troubleshooting. So I got a problem, I got to diagnose it or this is important, they should be running around to kind of checking on those things. But there's a tear of asset classes that our customers have that they just can't afford to have go down. And so what what what we encountered, what we needed to be able to do is to allow customers to make sure that their world stays up and running. And part of that is continuous monitoring of those assets, the critical ones. And that's really where proof that Nick and the sensors that are coming from FRS and emaint come in is how do we make sure that customers have the ability to continuously monitor those assets, to be able to get data from them from sensors, and then be able to turn that into insights and then be able to have a system of record like a CMMS to be able to ensure that the maintenance is being done.

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I think quite frankly, if I was a manufacturer, right, I've owned a business and I'm not really I'm interested in how the sausage is made, I want, I want results. And I want clarity, I want simplicity to a certain extent, I'm not going to dive deep. When we start talking about the solutions that are being offered, by Fluke Reliability Fluke, by the way, you know, from a brand perspective, everybody knows the color. Everybody knows the name is it's a, that's a real powerful component to the business. But with that said, there's, there's just, there's just so much change so much. I don't know I want again, as a manufacturer, I put on my manufacturer hat. I want to know that when I head down this road, because the internet says I got to digitally transform my business, that I'm not that I have a strategic partner that is going to also, you know, evolve with what's taking place. How are you? How's Fluke, Fluke reliability? Jason, keeping up with an ever? It's just never stopping? What do you guys do about that?

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A lot, you know, I think, you know, part of it's just keeping up with, you know, having a great product engine, a great product team. And we invest in engineering, we invest in product, you know, having the best people to be thinking about what's next and how to innovate. And I'll tell you know, I mentioned a big component of that is not just having great people, but having them out at our customers, as Ankush mentioned, understanding the problems, and really figuring out what's the what's the unmet need, what's that next to what's the thing that the customer doesn't know, they need, but you can kind of see it. And that's the that's the opening, you know, and that we find those all the time. Yeah, see,

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and I was going to jump over to you on coach, because I think it's one thing does have product development coming from Fluke, don't get me wrong, fantastic, awesome stuff. But to be able to fold in the feedback that comes from customers and saying, Hey, we're, we're a, we, we manufacture disqualifications, and if we had a device that did this, that the other thing, your your team brings that sort of back and you have that process, that workflow, shall we say, of how to incorporate that is that is that an accurate?

12:28

Absolutely. This is why we do this conference. We're here for a reason, right? We're here to tell our customers some of the work we've done over the last year based on the feedback they gave us based on the input they gave us. We're also here to learn from them. I think there's such so much learning that our teams get here, we've got our customer success teams, we've got our product teams here, we've got our solution architects, all really lapping in in terms of what are those unmet needs. So we can then feed it into our innovation engine and into our roadmaps and really come back next year and wow them with even better solutions. But really this conference, and a solution. Architects are customer success teams, that's what they really do.

13:09

Again, I, again, I'm drinking the Kool Aid, quite frankly, when I'm wandering around here, and everybody's just happy as a clam. But I think that what, what different, hey, we

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make clam feeders as well. You do what you said Happy as a clam. So we make clamp feeders as well.

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These are they measure voltage they sort of go around the clip. Got it? He was doing

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Mr. Fancy Pants? catching me off guard. Yeah. But the what is very evident. And again, when I have conversations with many manufacturers and in companies, I'm very fortunate. It's always trust, and where do I start? And to you, Jason, when when I come to a Fluke, what what is my expectation? I'm going to, you know, go to a go to the website, it's gives me an 800 number. And I take us through that had that sort of bringing somebody in that's really interested in what I need help. That's what

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yeah, you know, there are a couple of things to unpack what you just said, you know, what are things like? How do we think in what what's important to what we do, you know, reliability, accuracy, those are two things that are really important when we think about our brand that we deliver to our customers. I'll tell you the most important is safety is the thing that gets you talked about, like what motivates this team, going the idea of helping people get home safely on the job and not compromising it. That's what makes people's blood pump at Fluke.

14:46

I gotta tell you, that was a gap. I was missing it from a from a conversation perspective that that is that is the driver and your products. They're all about that. You know over the years of developing And then refining and honing and doing more and getting the customer feedback, all of that good stuff. Yeah, safety has to be. It's hard.

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Dealing with electricity is slightly dangerous

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as a former journeyman transmission lineman right here climbing poles. I understand that. And that, you know, but But nonetheless, it's funny every time I have a conversation with somebody who said, Yeah, everybody knows everybody's had in their time, some sort of Fluke involvement. I gotta tell you, you guys are you guys are hitting it out of the park. So with that said, I know you're busy. How do they get a hold of you guys start with you, Jason. You're saying I want I want to know more.

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You can kind of you can come to our website, obviously Fluke.com. You know, you can find me at jason.waxman@Fluke.com as well.

15:56

Well, I hope you're here and accelerate. But if not, you can come here next year, next year. And if not reach out to our Customer Success teams get on the web or reach out to me on coach.malhotra@flip.com

16:07

You guys were absolutely spot on. I love the vision. I love what you guys are doing. And I love the back fact that its people centric as well as because of Jason, safety. I like all of that workflows, work in conjunction. tremendous value proposition. Thank you very much for being on industrial Talk. Thanks

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for having us, Scott. All right, listeners, you

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know what the again, we're gonna have all the contact information for both on Kush, and Jason out on industrial talks. So go to the industrial talk.com And once again, Xcelerate 23 You need to put Accelerate 24 on your calendar, Fluke reliability, reach out to these two gents, you will not be disappointed. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. So stay tuned, we will be right back.

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You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.

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All right. Once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk. That's Jason That's on Cush, Fluke Reliability as well as Fluke Corporation represented in that conversation. You need to put Accelerate 2024 on your calendar. Don't have a month, definitely know the year. So be on the lookout for additional information associated with Accelerate 2024 also a hearty thank you to Mercy Chefs, this was all a part of Fluke gives back Mercy Chefs is an organization that is feeding bodies and souls. You know what they do? They go into areas that have been devastated by natural disasters or man made disasters, and they bring food, but not just any food, delicious, catered food, to just put a smile on people's face, who are truly, truly struggling look for them. That's mercy, chefs, all the contact, all the information will be out on industrial talk, support that organization. Again, I just can't reiterate this enough. It was such a great experience at Xcelerate 2023 Team Fluke, the people there, the user community, all passionate about reliability, all passionate about maintenance, all passionate about asset management. And then some really you got to look at how you get involved, how you participate. Reach out, all the contact information will be at industrial talk. All right. Be bold, be brave, dare greatly. I say that all the time because you need to hang out with people like Jason, people like uncooked and a team like Fluke and you're going to change the world. Thank you very much for joining. We're gonna have another vote. Well, we've got a bunch of content coming from Xcelerate 2023 So stay tuned. We're gonna have more