Joe Caetano with Elevotec

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

asset management, maintenance reliability, SMRP conference, Hexagon EAM, AI solutions, strategic practice, business trauma, critical control points, technology adoption, collaboration, transparency, operational profitability, supply chain insights, industry innovations, solution providers

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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

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go All right. Welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for joining this platform and your continued support of the number one industrial related podcast in the universe that celebrates you industry professionals all around the world. You're bold, you're brave, you dare greatly, you innovate, you collaborate, you're solving problems each and every day. That's why we celebrate you on Industrial Talk, we are right on the floor. SMRP, 33 right here, right now. You need to put this on your calendar. If you're in the world of asset management, maintenance and reliability, this is the show for you. You get to meet up with some of the leading leaders. Can I say leading leaders? I just did leading leaders in asset management, reliability, maintenance, right here. So put this on your calendar. Create a budget, put it on for next year. You must, all right, he's in the hot seat. Joe, Ella, vote tech. We're going to be talking about, which we talked about, chasing the game. I like that. I don't know what that means, but we're going to do it.

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We're going to talk about, we got to talk about it. Thank you again for having me. Pretty amazing. SMRP, very times. How many

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times how many times you've been here? SMRP,

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four or five different times since he was the first one. I think Florida was another one. I can't remember. But you know what it is? The greatest show I love coming to them all the time. And you know the amount of energy that's in here and the amount of solutions that surround us in here, very grateful that we're able to be here together. And you know, it's amazing that, when you walk around, how many of them you can connect together. And that leads right into chasing the game,

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yeah? But right, they're just nice people, yeah, everybody. I mean, I could go to any they're just nice people. Yep, it's so cool. It is. It's like a family. It is, yeah,

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and the grubs pretty good too. Yeah, no, no. Complain about that. A bit of barbecue today.

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Yeah, I've been stuck in the salt mine because I want, I've been, I've been wanting to tell the story for everybody. I'm doing my part to tell the story. I'm trying to inspire. Look at me. Look at me. All right. For the listeners, give us a little background on Joe. Yeah.

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So Joe Caetano, a level tech again. Very grateful to be here with my team, talking to a lot of great, fantastic people these flags up here that have Yeah. Company, yeah, it was. They did a fantastic job, uh, putting us together here. And we've been talking to a lot of great people, not only, not only solution providers, but great folks that stopped by that that are you know, they need some help, need some solutions. And we've just been having some great conversations. And our our focus is solution. We look at solutions. So Hexagon EAM is a big part of our solution portfolio. Very grateful to them. They're here with us today at the show. They'll be here with us for the duration. And, you know, leading the way with a with a bonafide tier one platform like Hexagon, EAM is one of the ways that we can start octave. Oh, yeah, sorry, apologies, it will soon be octave, yeah. But I think you know where I'm going, that when you've got a tier one, when you've got a tier one horse, champion horse in the stable, like Hexagon, em, yeah, sky's the limit. And, you know, it's, it's one of the things we've been talking to a lot of people about in that, not just chasing the game, but also things like the AI piece. How is the, how's your AI Going to, going to give you the answers you're looking for, if you don't have a source with the data, the information that's going to answer those questions, well, I'll tell you what Hexagon em, it's the quarterback for that type of stuff, right? So, so when we talk about, you know, the solutions that we have spoken to people about, they start anywhere from, you know, just getting started. It. Let's just get started. Let's get something put in. Let's start to grow. Let's find a road map. Let's get that road map and start to grow and increase. Then you got some other folks that are on the opposite side of the spectrum, and they're pretty mature, and now they're starting to get into the sensor space, and they want to be able to get their EAM system to to help them out with that stuff. So fantastic conversations. And you know, when you think about all of these conversations, I think I told you before, I'm a hockey guy hockey, I'm a hockey guy, and I coach hockey this year. You 18, so you can imagine what that gong show is like, right? So we, we, we've always used a saying, or there is a saying in hockey, yeah, it's called Chasing the game. And what that means to a coach and his team is that you're usually behind, and you got to pull out every stop at every cost, and make decisions, rash decisions, to try and tie or win the game. And I look back at that, and I look back at business, and I look back at industry, and I'm thinking, man, everybody's chasing the game, and they're chasing the game because they want to chase the game, right? Good, good teams. Champions. What do they do? They invest in good strategic. Good practice. They practice, they practice, they figure it out, they close the gaps, and before you know it, they're a champion. Well, when you don't make that investment, and you continually just, you know, run after the answer, it all, it all falls apart and trying to win the game is extremely difficult, right? So where do I see that? Well, when I'm trying to do Asset Management off a spreadsheet or an Access database, chasing the game a little bit there, when I'm not listening to my machines, there's probably a lot of chasing the game there. And then I'm not listening to my people, and I'm not listening to the things that are clear indicators for me trying to manage my business, because at the end of the day, hey, we're in business. Whether you're delivering a product or you're delivering a service, doesn't matter. At the end of the day, it's about cash in the check, and if you can't produce it, you can't invoice it. You can't cash a check. I'm pretty candid about this stuff, so being able to operate 50% off an Excel spreadsheet, I'm chasing the game. It's costing me money to do it, not having the tools that I need to key critical people on my shop floor or the front end, or tying in to sources of information that are going to give me intelligence, that make me smarter so I can make better decisions. Chasing the game. It's all chasing the game. And what I would advocate to people, if you have not got out to SMRP in their conferences, you should. It's amazing at how many great, fantastic people that you can meet here, how much experience and synergy that they can share with you. Yeah? And look, you don't got to buy anything. Doesn't cost anything to have a conversation.

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You want to learn right, learn right. Yeah.

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And you know, at the end of the day, that's what we do. When we stop chasing the game, it's because we've decided that we want to learn. Yeah, we're not fighting it anymore. We're deciding and acknowledging we want to learn. So when we want to learn, we have good conversations. Good conversations lead us to palatable solutions, right? And at the end of the day, whether anybody here wants to and we can, you know, we can debate about opinion. We all have something in common. We're in the maintenance game, and it's about keeping it alive, making sure it delivers whatever it's meant to deliver, so we can be a sustainable company.

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Here's my and maybe you can give me an explanation on this. Let's say I'm a I'm a company. I'm inefficient, which I am. And I decided that, Hey, I am ready. I'm ready to change my game here, or whatever. I'm tired of chasing it good. That's a good, good position to be in. And then I go down that road, and I and I went in earnest. I do it so I start to receive or realize good bottom line benefits. You know, bottom line financial benefits. How do you sustain that? Let's say I go all in. I achieve everything that I'm trying to achieve. And then somebody comes in and says, Why are we spending all this money when we're already this efficient, and I'm going to change things up. I just I struggle with that, because once you take an inefficient business like me, and you get rid of all the garbage, and I'm like, yeah, check it out. And I'm riding in on this white horse, and I'm the greatest thing since slight. Spread. Eventually everything just sort of normalizes. You're not going to get these big wins. How do you how do you sustain that?

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Yeah, and I agree. And it's and again that I've been I've been doing this for many years, having many conversations, and it's just it always gets down to the that leadership and what does your organization do? And this is another thing that always, there's always the now we have to use this system and that nobody really is like, Yay, we are using this. How do you ensure that, that what you do is, you know, delivering and and people are like, yeah, it works. Do you stick around?

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And so I was telling, I was telling some folks today, one unique thing that we do that I think differs with everybody else, and I call it, I call it the walk we walk in and we live with it, and then we walk out when it's successful and it's live and it's running. And to do that, what that means is we need to walk in and we need to be business first. Because when we're business first, we're talking to the people that have the secrets. Because the priority, hey, look, technology is going to do it. It does it. So let's, let's

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just park that. Agreed. It's always, it's always the human equation,

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right? And and the one reality is, technology doesn't have a voice, so it can't speak up for itself. But when we come in and we prioritize the business like we prioritize ours, you know, we've picked specific products that help us manage our service side and service delivery, it's a full, online, transparent collaboration with the customer, because. Is when we talk to our customers business first, they want a transparency, collaboration and contribution, and we implemented those controls, and that's how we deal with our customers. So when we talk about implementing a solution as a management solution, it's really understanding the business, and our priority is to know the business better than they do, because once we know that when we do a shop floor walk, we're going to ask questions, and they're unorthodox questions, and they're going to be responses that people will generally let out a lot of the pain. There's a term that I use called Business trauma. I think more people, I think there's a ton of business trauma that people have been through either bad implementations or bad management experience and different things, and they carry that baggage everywhere,

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everywhere. Yeah, it's a common problem, man. Come on,

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right? Yeah. So when we learn about business trauma, when we learn about those pains, that in instantly tells us what the priorities are on when the first cut of that solution has to make it to to that end user, because when they see that those aspects are not part of this journey, they change.

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Do you? Because, you know, way back when, when I was deploying systems, we would always to do something like that. It was always painful. So we would do as is, to be gap analysis and and in our as is process mapping. How do you do that? Let's, let's get in a room. Let's get on a whiteboard, and let's get all of the people that are there to hash it out, and then you just, you just grind it. And that's where I found those that trauma to exist. Now we do it that way. Now, you know, I remember that, and it becomes sort of a bitchy session, because it's, it's personal, yeah? But then you, then you get everybody shaking their head in the right direction, like, Yeah, that's right. This is and then you, then you go into that. Well, how do you want? Let's go to that to be side, and then be able to map that all out and get everybody to say that's the right thing to do. Then marry up the technology to mimic that, to be what everybody agrees to. You guys do something absolutely.

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And here's the one thing we we use a blueprint, templated model, so very similar to what you've what you've mentioned, our way of doing the as is, is the walk and talk. Then what we do is we come into a room because we've got little over 90 some odd asset class blueprints and asset types, and we sit down and we have a conversation, and that conversation is, this is what to be, is going to be right? Why can't it work right? And I think what happens is the conversation becomes less about this, this debate about whether I like the color of the screen or the fields in the wrong place where it's like no. Now that you put it that way, that might work, and that's the conversation we want to have is, let's show you, let's show you that template, and you tell us, yeah, why you think it won't work, right? Because the minute you can tell us why it won't work, well, you just solved our gap. And that's the constructive conversation you have to have. It that we have to have.

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It's, it's Yeah, and people, it's digit digging, right? It is. It's just, there's no other way of getting around it. But it is, you can't, you can't deploy a solution and and expect success without that sweat equity,

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exactly. And you know what I you know what we find when we use that methodology is, we'll get in a room. Let's say there's 10 of those folk in and you, you position the conversation. Here's, you know, here's going to be your service request process. That's what it's going to do. You tell me why it can't work. Well, you may have one person put up their hand say, Well, I don't think it'll work because of that, and then somebody else will agree. You now got two you got the first secret of the gap you got to close, because now what they do is they start to work together, yeah, to actually identify the change that they want to see the final outcome and the impact and their ownership is there, yeah, some of the old traditional methods were okay. Let's draw it out. I. Think it kind of needs to look like that. Well, we'll have to try it, right? So let's do it a different way. This is how it's going to be. You want to take it for a test drive, and we need to, you know? We need to adjust something. Okay? We'll adjust it, and then we'll get moving on it and move on to the next thing. And we found that the adoption of the solution is better because they're a contributor. Yeah, it Yeah, and that's what we need to do with them. They got to be contributors.

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You're absolutely spot on chasing the game. Was all was all that was. Theme was sort of threaded throughout that whole conversation, Joe, how do people get a hold of you? What's the best way?

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Absolutely, you can look us

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up@www.com you're on LinkedIn, yeah, say that's I'll simplify this. You're on LinkedIn,

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anytime, anyplace. And if there's anything we can help with, if it's just one thing, take it away. Thank you so much for having us love your front

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door. There it is, right there. All right, you need to reach out to Joe. He is we'll have all the contact information for Joe out on Industrial Talk. So fear not. It'll be out there. Listen to his conversation as you just do it. You will not be disappointed. All right, we're broadcasting once again from SMRP. It is a great event. Put this on the calendar for next year. If you're not here today, yeah, you just need to put it on your calendar. If you're in the world of asset management, maintenance, reliability, technology, it's all here, and it's all being delivered by people who are passionate about your sex. All right, we're gonna, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned. We will be right back.

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You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network,

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another smoking conversation from SMRP this year. I think it's SMRP 33 smoking conversation with Joe Elevotec, the company talking about chasing the game. Love the analogy. Agree with it 100% and I just if you're in the world, once again, in the world of asset management, in the world of reliability, in the world of maintenance. This is an event that you need to put on your calendar if you're looking at definitely getting into this profession. Start there. You get to you get to hang out with people like Joe and team Ella vo tech, right there. Oh, good. All right. I say it once. I've said it a million times. Industrial Talk is here for you. You need to amplify your voice. You need to get that message out. Reach out to me. Be bold, be brave. Derek, greatly. Hang out with Joe. Change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation shortly. So stay tuned.