Max Meegan with FPT Industrial

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Hey, it's Scott MacKenzie with Industrial Talk. Iris is the global leader in electrical maintenance safety, delivering technologies that let team inspect energized equipment safely using closed panel condition based monitoring to reduce risk and downtime. Their patented infrared and ultrasonic inspection windows make it possible to detect issues early boosting reliability and protect the people who keep the operations running. If improving safety and avoiding unplanned failures is your mission, Iris has the solution to get you there. Learn more@iris.com

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you 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 all right once again. Welcome to Industrial Talk. Thank you very much for joining the number one industrial related podcast in the universe that celebrates industry professionals just like you. You know why? Because you're bold, you're brave, you dare greatly, you collaborate. You're solving problems, you're making the world a better place. That's why we celebrate you. That's why you are the heroes in Industrial Talk. All right, we're on site right now. PowerGen is the event. It is in San Antonio, Texas, and I got to tell you, it is a collection of absolute, wonderful problem solvers. They are focused on you and your success. And speaking of that, in the hot seat, we have a gentleman by the name of Max Megan. He is head of sales North America. Setting is Mexico. Mexico is included, okay, just, just want to make sure get the geographics right. FPT is the company. We're going to be talking a little bit about what they're doing here, and a little bit about FPT and a little bit about Max. So let's get a cracker.

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All right,

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as I coached him before we started, I start out with, hey, having a good show, having a fantastic show. Absolutely, he had knocked it out of the park on that one. Why has it been good? It's been great. I mean, the collaboration that we have with all of our customers, other you know, potential customers, OEMs, that we're meeting here, seeing what the industry trends are. It's been a really great show, and we've been having meetings non stop.

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Yeah, is this the first time you were here? No, absolutely not. So we've been actually, no, not you. I'm saying me personally, you. No, no timer. I've been here. I think this is about my fourth or fifth show. Do you think this show is a little bit bigger? I think this year is definitely bigger than previous years. You know what I heard? I heard that this used to be a really gargantuan show, a lot of people, and it sort of tapered off, maybe covid, or whatever I was gonna say. I think covid is kind of the time I remember, you know me, not necessarily. So I've been with FPT for about 12 years, but I only joined the commercial team about five years ago, so I know that we've been coming as FPT to PowerGen for almost seven, eight years now. Right before covid, it was a huge show, and then I think you see the all those trade shows shrinking a little bit around covid, but it seems like it's picking up year over year. It's growing, and I've been great. Yeah, I don't know how you can avoid, especially in the world of Power Generation and what, what the market is demanding. I don't see how you can not, or how you can avoid something like this, no, and being able to interact with people who are looking for true solutions to, you know, and I'm sure you're dealing with it. You're dealing with it in such a way they're saying, hey, I need power yesterday, right? Yeah, exactly. Okay, I got you. Let's, let's put a little reason on that. So all right, before we get into the conversation, give us a little background on max and why you're such an incredible professional. Yeah, absolutely. So I actually have a technical background. I have an engineering degree, and I started, like I said, with FPT about 12 years ago. So I started doing quality engineering, taking apart. Hold it, hold it. Let's, let's just do the math.

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Max started when he was maybe eight and a half, and now senior, so he's 18.

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For the listeners, let's, let's dive into FPT. Give us a little overview of what your company does, and then we're going to dive into that problems or the challenges that FPT is for us solving. Yeah, sure. So FPT is Fiat powertrain technologies. We're the diesel engine manufacturers, and actually we're one of the largest diesel engine manufacturers on the planet. We build about three to 400,000 diesel engines from on road, off road, marine and Power Generation segments. So we also have one of the largest product portfolios from a diesel engine manufacturer from anywhere 30 kilowatt up to almost 800 kilowatt.

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How long has FPT been in business? Well, let's say FPT is a brand, is a relatively new brand, so maybe only about 20 years. But we go back to the Iveco days, to the Fiat days. So we, as an engine builder, have been around for almost 100

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years. So we're, you're an engine building company, correct? So, and then, then, let's say I'm a generator. Are you guys? You're not doing generation? No, no, you do the engine. We do the engines, and our customers are the generator. OEMs see that makes sense and and so they come to you, and they're saying, hey, I need an engine. Are you finding it difficult to satisfy or to respond to the demand that the market is placing on your solutions? You know, different supply chain, the value chain, the chain, you know, I'd say the difficulty, no, we actually our approach is to try to be as flexible and offer our customers as many different options as we can. So we offer everything from unregulated engines for export, tier three engines for emergency stationary in North America, tier four, final for mobile and prime power and rental. Okay? Then we also offer all sorts of different packaging, from just a bare engine, if a customer wants to source all the components you mentioned, supply chain, source all the components themselves and put it together. Or we offer complete package, from radiator to air cleaner to with tier four final all that after treatment system assembled coming from the factory is one drop in solution.

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You pretty much covered everything on that, right? Yeah. There's nobody comes up to you and say, Hey, I you know, I want to do it this way. I'm sorry, man, we have a solution. Yeah, clearly you do. Does FPT provide sort of that ongoing maintenance as well. Let's say I have, I have, I have your maybe it's through the OEM. I don't know. It probably is, and probably is not, and probably you guys do everything in between, but to be able to provide that maintenance of that asset, yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, it's one of the things that when we sign on a new customer or a Gen said OEM, we determine what level of service they want. We have options from them being completely self servicing, where they could develop their own service network and manage all that service as themselves through their dealers, or we have a standing service network throughout North America that they could bring that engine, if there's some problem with it, they could bring it to one of our service networks that have all the certain service and maintenance completed through our locations. But you can go out there and do the maintenance and services out there on the on on site, right? Yeah, absolutely. Or they bring it to one of our local service dealers.

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How many service dealers do you have? Oh, that's a good question. I'd say somewhere around three to 400 across North America. But, you know, we'd have to double check on the exact same close to them. I'm not gonna use AI,

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okay, not gonna Fact Check me out. No, no, that's pretty much. I'll just take you at your word by any stretch of the imagination. So let's talk challenges. What are you seeing specifically in the market for FPT, you know, I've had a number of conversations with a number of individuals here at this particular event.

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What is your view of what some maybe some of the challenges FPT is going to be is looking at in the marketplace? Well, I'd say maybe two come to mind. The first one is going to be with rental and prime PowerGen sets, all right? And so typically, the challenge with that is, let's say you have a 200 kilowatt Gen set. It goes on to a rental yard. The rental yard is going to rent whatever they have available there. Somebody might only need 20 kilowatt, 30 kilowatt, and now you have this huge, oversized Gen set. Problem is, that is when you underload a generator, that causes some issues with the after treatment system and reliability of the components. So we actually developed a technology to address that number one concern that people have with rental or prime PowerGen, that's an under loading and that our after treatment system, we have an exhaust break or an exhaust flap, where, if it senses it's being under loaded, it puts a back pressure on the engine and almost puts an artificial load to make sure that you don't have any of those reliability issues that many of our competitors run into every single day.

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I didn't know that. I don't know a lot of things, and I didn't know just sort of hit me by the so I didn't that's an interesting challenge. So we have a rental market.

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Is there an increase in demand for those rental assets?

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Sets. I think you're gonna see rental growing year over year. I mean, there's always going to be construction needs. I think that's a that's a division or a PowerGen market that's continuously growing. Yeah, I see just in general, the market itself. I think there's a renaissance. I think there is

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a and I always try to follow the money. I think there's a greater amount of passion for capital, figuring out how to deploy that capital, which then also means, you know, expansions and construction projects and so on and so forth. It just seems to me that there will be a greater demand for the solutions that you can provide. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, when you look at a rental yard, to uptime is key. If the machine's not running, that rental yard is not making money, so they want to find the solution that is the most reliable, that addresses the biggest concerns that they have. And that's why we've been extremely successful over the last few years. We're growing a lot in the segment. What other what other areas do you see that are creating some sort of interesting challenges? Well, I think the other one that, you know, you walk around the show here, everyone's talking about data centers, data centers. No way. Oh my gosh, here. I have to be I have to be honest, it's sort of refreshing, because other shows talk about AI, they don't go data centers. They just talk about AI. Okay, there you go. I'm glad we're not talking AI. We're talking, of course, data centers. About that like, oh, go ahead. No, no problem. I mean, it's always the the amount of power demands that we're seeing with data center is just growing every single day, right? And they want it, they want it yesterday, exactly. They want it yesterday. And the problem is, when you look at the big engines that those data centers need, one, Meg, two. Meg, three. Meg, the lead times in the supply chain on those is so far out, they're booked out for years. You're never going to get the engine. So what, what we're seeing now is our range, like I said, we're probably from 30 kilowatt up to, you know, six or 700 kilowatt. Customers are going and actually putting smaller generators in parallel to meet those higher power demands. And our lead times are short five, six months from the factory if we receive an order today, versus four years out. For those one two meg engines. He could take four of our engines, put them in parallel six months you have your solution

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done. See, that's interesting. You know what it reminds me of? So this is, this is obscure, but follow the logic, please. All right, so traffic lights,

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they used to be just single bulbs. Burnout done.

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That's where we're going with the generation. Do you agree? Absolutely, 100% you could take one engine, take it out for services, modular? Yes, easy to swap out, versus you have a two meg engine that goes down, you're dead in the water. You lose.

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See, you're solving problems there.

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Absolutely that that see, and I agree with you at 100% Yeah, you know. And it's not that difficult to to put them in parallel. It's no not at all. It's easy. It's normal practice. They do it today, even not with data centers. But even if you're on a rental job and you need power, you can tie three or four rental mobile generators together. It's been done for years. I like that. That's exciting. It is. It's exciting stuff, anything else that we have not covered, that we need to be covering, that you need to express from FPT, no. I mean, I'd say again, our, our biggest advantage is that exhaust break in our after treatment system. I'd say that's our other main differentiator is that after treatment system. So I'll give you a little bit of history here. Okay, so when all engine manufacturers are running tier two or tier three, EPA said, Okay, we're gonna go to tier four, interim and eventually tier four, final, right? A lot of engine manufacturers tried to avoid introducing urea and Dev systems and SCR systems, because it's a new technology. People are afraid of it, right? So other manufacturers on the route of, okay, let's put EGR exhaust gas recirculation, and let's put a DPF or a diesel particulate filter that inherently makes the engine efficiency lower, but you avoid that SCR system, right? Right? FPT was one of the only manufacturers that went the opposite route to say, okay, rather than putting EGR in a DPF on an engine, that makes it less efficient, you have to burn fuel to go through a regen, regen, and you're putting the machine out of service for 30 minutes to an hour while it cleans itself. Why don't we go the other route? Say, Let's make the most optimized fuel combustion strategy. All that fuel is producing power. What that means is that we produce almost no particulate matter. Wow. So we don't need that's brilliant. Yeah, it's so we produce no no particulate matter. And now with Stage Five, even we don't need a DPF, which every other manufacturer is putting a DPF on their engine, we can get away with a passive filter, no active regeneration, and we're one of the only engines on the market that can do that. So that's why we're seeing our stage five technology widely adopted in North America. A lot of customers are looking for that alternative so they don't have that DPF that's going through regen and putting the machine out of service your Gatling gun. Just information and insights. You like this stuff, don't you? I love it. No way. How do people get a.

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you, Max, I'm on LinkedIn. Reach out anytime. All right, he was coached to say that because, yeah, you know that's where you go. I know that's where you go. You want to look at max. You want to see what he's doing. We're going to have all the contact information for max out on Industrial Talks. You were fantastic, Max. Thank you very much for being on the show. All right, once again, we are broadcasting from PowerGen here in San Antonio, Texas, and you get people like Max. They're all over the place. Maybe not as smart as Max, but there are you. You're too kind. There you go. And again, he's only 18, and he has all this stuff because he's amazing. All right, we're gonna wrap it up on the other side. Stay tuned. We will be right back. You're listening to the Industrial Talk Podcast Network.

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All right, that's Max Megan. I'm looking at a stat card, F, P, T, industrial. What that stands for? It's on his stat card, right there. Fiat, powertrain technologies.

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I was just using FPT in the conversation. I'm better because of him, because of his insights, because of what they were doing at PowerGen again, and I'm going to say it again and again, the Power Generation market is absolutely on fire in a good sense, not a bad sense. In a good sense, because we need more power. We need solutions. And it is touching every aspect of the market and society that's and if you're looking to get into a market or a business or whatever. Yeah, Power Generation, that's a must. Put this one on your calendar. All right, be bold, be brave, dare greatly. Hang out with Max change the world. We're gonna have another great conversation coming from PowerGen shortly. So stay tuned.