Steve Carter with KCF Technologies
Industrial Talk is onsite at the 30th Annual SMRP conference and speaking with to Steve Carter, National Sales Director at KCF Technologies about “Achieving peak optional health through vibration IoT solutions”. Get the answers to your “vibration” questions along with Steve's unique insight on the “How” on this Industrial Talk interview!
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PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
assets, steve, industrial, people, vibration, work, data, fan, carter, technologies, sensors, pilot, software, plant, fault, diagnostic, solving, real, rare earth magnets, scott
This episode of industrial Talk is brought to you by RDI Technologies. RDI Technologies is the pioneer in motion amplification. Their proprietary technology enables users to see and measure motion impossible to the human eye and turning complex data into easy-to-understand videos to solve maintenance challenges quickly and safely. For more information, go to RDITechnologies.com. Hey, industrial Talk is brought to you by CAP Logistics. You want to minimize downtime, absolutely. increase reliability, you bet ensure operational profitability. Yes, you do. That means you need 24/7 365 insights into your supply chain, look no further CAP Logistics, go to CAPLogistics.com Or just call them. They're great people 800-227-2471.
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 right once
again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast in the universe, Steve and you can pretty much track that by data, no doubt about it. And we are broadcasting from the 30th annual SMRP conference. I'm right here on the exhibition floor. I'm looking at incredible vendors providing great services and solving doggone problems here. And now, because you are bold, brave and daring greatly. You deserve all of this because we want you to be a success. That's what that's what industrial talk is all about. Steve Carter's in the house. He's in the hot seat. And we're going to be talking about Well, Steve Carter stuff. I don't know if that's right. But he's here. He's gonna He's gonna dazzle everybody. Hey, Steve.
Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm all I'm all geeked out. Right? Because you're the first time this is a first time conversation we've never we've never met before we met today and is and you've never been on the podcast. And so I'm always excited when I have new people. Well,
I am excited as well. I've actually listened to your podcast in the past. Have you ever been in preparation for this job I took specifically, I mean, that's what kind of nerd I am. Wow.
I feel really pretty cool about the whole I'm touched. Because, you know, it's funny, it's, I recognize the fact that one I can geek out on us enough. I don't care man, okie calculate geek. And I'm always thinking, oh, there might be three people out there that, that like this, this and be passionate about innovation, technology, solving problems and and just being into that world. So with that said, give us a little background on who Steve is.
Steve Carter, national sales manager in heavy trucking and heavy machinery for KCF Technologies.
Tell me when you say heavy trucking, what do you mean and heavy machinery like, like mining equipment? And, you know, big ol semis and things? That's
a great question, Scott. Because there is a large range when it comes to heavy trucking. You've got your you know, your dodge 2500 and above class 45678. Those are my bread and butter, if you will. When you think about heavy trucking, you're thinking about semi trucks, you're thinking about dump trucks, you know, any number of multi axle vehicles.
So with that said, what are we doing? KCF? What about? What about? I mean, okay, so you're in heavy truck, your truck and machinery? What what does that mean? What, What problems are we trying to solve here?
So, I mean, when it comes to the KCF, we're basically a comprehensive machine health solution. We use wireless vibration sensors to transmit data from manufacturing equipment, to the cloud, and then to our proprietary smart diagnostic software, which then allows individuals who don't have a advanced degree in vibration, to better understand what their machines are doing, and how we can support them.
But but the machines are heavy truck and machinery,
you know, it's you're talking fans, pumps, motors. Everybody's got the same twin blower fan out of Chicago. So a lot of the assets are similar. You know, we go into sectors that KCF so I'm in the automotive sector. So everybody who works in this sector, you know, it's basically the same type of assets across the board. Now, there will be similar assets across you know, every sector, but you know, we try to hone it down for automotive that way. You know, we really specialize and probably worked on an ad said at another plant so we can better understand yours
do you take into consideration the location of the asset, so that fan, that motor in Michigan, is it the same as the fan motor down in Alabama,
you know, you're never gonna get see the same. Because it's always different about, you know, installation environment, it's never the same, there are similarities, if you will, which has been able to give us the ability to build out specific assets specific models. So we've got over 200,000 years of machine health data, where we're able to build out algorithms that we can put a model on top of the fan, and be able to help you better diagnose and understand when you're going to see a flop in that asset. And what you need to do to correct it as well.
So you do that. So you've got the proprietary algorithms that you've collected all this data, so you have a fairly decent picture of that fan, that whatever I keep using fan, I would like to get sort of progressive conversation beyond a fan. But let's talk about the fact anyway. But you're able to take all of the data and algorithms and be able to to truly hone that diagnostic on that piece of equipment, that asset, given the fact that you've got all this great information on it,
we can and the great thing about our software is it also uses machine learning. So as we diagnose those faults, and then you correctly say in the software that that was the issue, you did fix it. And we've seen, you know, the the asset come out of that fault mode, going forward. Now we know that that kind of squiggly line, if you will, portrays this fall, and then going forward, we can continue to hone that and become more and more accurate as we go.
Yeah, and I would I would imagine, it's also a situation where you're, you're analyzing data, whatever that looks like, and I'm gonna continue to analyze this data. And I mean, there's, everything's fine, everything's fine. And not all data. How do you deal with I'm sorry, I digress. I just just went on a tangent here. And it's something popped into my head. If all the data if everything's fine. If everything's just reading fine. You don't need that data? Do you do? Or do you just keep on storing that way, just
keep on storing that data? You do? Yeah, that gives us the ability to have historical data that we can draw upon in the future. And then the nice thing about that is, you know, KCF has three really big components that make it such a standout company. Number one is hardware, we've got fantastic hardware, all proprietary. Number two, our software, smart diagnostic software, which you know, makes those squiggly lines digestible, for your average shopfloor worker, you don't have to have one person sitting in the background, you know, giving people the, you know, I guess the correct information, if you will, after reading through it. And the number three is we have a sentry team, which is our services department, which is a team of all level two certified vibration analysts who sit back and review that data, so you don't have to. So there's no one person at your plant sitting behind a computer, you know, eight hours a day, even though you know, your plants running 24 hours, you can have those people out working. And then we will let you know when there's an alert or there's a fault.
Yeah, gotta get some clarification. And you say, century
century, century team, and those are basically our technical analysts behind the salespeople.
So run us through the process. Back to the fan. Yeah. So we got a device out there on the fan and you're, you're you're measuring the vibration of what's going on, everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's fine. Then all of a sudden, things start to trend differently. But you have an analytic component. Yep. And as far as saying, hey, it's trending, it's doing some things that just be, I'm going to notify somebody we're gonna do, right. Yep. So I'm still tracking, I'm gonna notify somebody saying, hey, something's going out there. And I don't know what's going on. But there it is, you need to go grease that fan will say oh, so there is even
tell you what you need to do to correct it. So and I've actually seen this happen in real time. We've got a large trucking company on the West Coast. I was there to basically do a lunch and learn and walking through software further than installed a week prior. And all of a sudden, we were getting some alerts from your fan on the roof. And you know, it said, Hey, listen, we're having alert looks like you need to go grease that fan. So maintenance guy is sitting right next to me calls it out as the maintenance tech go up there. And in real time, we actually saw the acceleration dropped from two days back to point nine, nine, okay, and he was he was sold right there.
Along the same time with lubrication, right? There's there are many schools
of thought out there. There are many, many more than I ever imagined more than
many schools. And do you in that same analogy, you're saying okay, you need to put have X amount of this type of grease here. And from a maintenance perspective from me, yep, all I have to do is go, Okay, I got I need that type of grease, I need this amount. So the analytics and I'm, you know, I need to do that, and boom, and I can see it real time.
And you can see in real time, which is pretty cool, which leads to us being able to build heat maps right of your plant floor and let you know which shift is working correctly. So you can see the heat map that you know, when second shift goes out and does what they were told to do what they believe is the right way to provide that maintenance, you can see that they're actually maybe touching assets, they don't need to touch, you know, if it's green, you don't need to touch it, you only really need to start to work on the ones that are yellow and red. So having this real time heat map of which assets you can focus your time on, actually helps schedule, help save time and relieve the fact that right now we're going through a labor shortage is affecting everyone. So imagine if you were able to focus all your time on the assets that needed it, and not the ones that did.
It makes sense. And and so if let's take that next step forward, here's here, I come in. I'm a maintenance professional, I look at my dashboard.
Dashboards are pretty hot. I'll show you some pictures.
So I got some dashboards, which I'm always geeky about. And I'm looking at it I'm looking at all of the assets that are being tracked. And then I just look at because it's we're all about color codes. Green, yellow, red, red, bad, bad, bad. Yeah, run on out there, but you don't want I mean, organizationally, do you want you want any red? Or do you try to capture that yellow? You want to capture
the yellow? Yeah, it means you're gonna see a fault and that machine? And we're our whole goal is zero downtime? Yes. Safety? Yep, zero downtime. Yep,
yep. Because that means that asset is spinning out what it needs to be spinning out, and it needs its revenue, all of that good. You know,
you want to make sure throughput as high as possible. And, you know, that's what people are trying, they're trying to do more with less right now.
So, it begs the question, so you had me at hello, there begs the question of what what what push backs to us? I mean, what, what push backs are there? I? Well,
you know, it's it's a well known that, you know, ultrasonic is better than vibration. Right?
You say so, I'm not gonna get into that.
This is what's been thrown back in my face all the time is, you know, ultrasonic, you're going to catch the fault earlier. But then those people won't be doing Ultra sun once a quarter. Well, vibration, continuous monitoring is the best, right? Because you're going to be able to see that, because you're monitoring that asset 24/7. So our, basically, our signal foot is that you could get it down to about every 12 seconds, I wouldn't suggest that it's going to really drain the battery. But if you had an asset that you want to monitor that closely, you could do it for every 12 seconds. And people say, you know, why do you need to do it that often? Well, there's some times that an asset will go into fault mode, that nobody knows it, and it will reconnect itself, but you want to be able to capture that. So you know, they can you will to death by 1000 paper cuts, right? So catch it the first time, fix it, and then that way it's going to integrate and extend your machine help the life the machine? Yeah. So there's a lot of things that the only pushback I really get is, people don't believe it's possible. Right? So which is why we're don't don't believe it's probably possible possible to actually know Yeah, to catch these faults and be able to diagnose them correctly, which makes me you know, I'm a big believer in pilots. So we do a number of pilots, we usually like to do a pilot before we have a company buy, just because it gets them familiar with the product, it gets them excited. And then they end up buying even before the pilots over and expanding that initial purchase.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of incremental ism. Yes. Like I mean, I understand the the pilot as long as people don't get in that pilot purgatory where there's a sort of it is
great. Hey, there is a company that I'm dealing with right now that is in pilot purgatory. I'm not going to name names. No,
don't don't start reliability to trash talk in here on on industrial, definitely vote. But but the reality is, is that I agree with that. I think that but do you find the community as a whole industry as a whole beginning to sort of embrace the reality that yeah, this stuff's working. This stuff means I mean, I see the value.
I mean, I would start I'd like to think it's me, and they see the value with my sales pitch, but honestly, I've never been in a position like this in a sales position where I'd had companies call me and begged me to come out. It's it's been something that more and more people are beginning to realize that they need to do and once they do, they just can't get enough.
It seems to me as we close seems to me that it's is it a fairly decent Turn around. I mean, I mean, if I were saying, that pump right there, man that pumps important. And I come to you and I go, Steve, that pumps important. What can we do? We could do it how I shifted. I didn't want to go to a fan because I don't want to have any fans. I thought we will be talking fans. Oh, no, no,
I'm gonna be prepared to talk pop. Yeah, huh? No, it's it's just a fluke. Our vibration sensors are actually rare earth magnets. I can tell you they're very strong magnets. I put one on my fireplace, and both my kids haven't been able to rip it off yet. So the install takes minutes. Sometimes. I mean, we like to make sure that you're monitoring the correct assets. Well, yeah, you know, we're doing it the right way. But honestly, I've seen 200 300 sensors installed in an afternoon.
And then it starts, you know,
immediately. I was at an engine plant a month ago and brought my Demo Kit, which is always you know, that's never clunky. Brought my Demo Kit set up. And by the time I got back to the boardroom, we were watching their assets in real time.
And as you're looking at the assets in real time, are you able to sort of also begin to pull diagnostics and see? Yeah, that's, that's a red guy.
Yeah, we can benchmark and then we continue to improve that asset following.
While she's, I should be asking you for money. Because apparently, everybody else is asking you.
I've got a wedding ring. I just, I do too.
I want to wear earth
magnet. Oh, doesn't? Who doesn't? Really cool. The art everyone. Yes.
As you can say I was I was a bit distracted by the fact that you went around that motor thing. And you did that. And I was still thinking,
I don't get a hold of rare earth magnets. It was like, Yeah, all right. We're gonna
hear you were this isn't this is fantastic. By the way. On your as I look at your booth, I think I see your booth. Yeah, I see the corner of your that's us. Yeah, what I do see is that you have these devices, are they that does that.
Those are the water sensors. They look like little floaties they do? Yeah, I thought it was
a they're still in that stuff. I want to take a picture of one and then I'll post it and then you guys can see it. Everybody out there on LinkedIn. Anyway, how to get a hold of
a Scott, you can reach me at my email, Steve dot Carter at KCF tech.com. Or give me a call myself. 215-205-5031. I
have his card. So listener out there. Who needs to get a hold of Steve. Fair not it's going to all be out on industrial talk.com. What's his cell number? You sure you want to get there? Oh, yeah. All right. Oh, yeah. No big deal. No. sweat off my back. All right, we're broadcasting from the 30th annual SMRP conference. You get great people like Steve, and many others, delivering value solving problems. It is exciting. I like it. You like it, too. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. So stay tuned. We will be right back.
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
All right. Once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk. And absolutely. Thank you very much for your support. Steve Carter, go out to his stack card, LinkedIn stat card KCF Technologies. And by the way, if you're out on video, he referenced flow in a so device. Well, the device does look like that. But if you're out there, check it out. Right there. Yep, there's the magnet. There's the device. And by the way, it's it's super he was right, super easy. So you just sit there. You got this little clap right there. And then yet, you can just pull it off. And you get to the device. There it is. That easy peasy lemon squeezy. K c, f technology. There it is right there in your face right there. All right. Thank you, again for joining. Go out to industrial talk. Give us your support. If you're an industry whatsoever, reach out to me, we're going to be at conferences, we're going to be doing a lot of things. We're going to elevate this conversation in 2023. We need to make sure that you are celebrated along with all the other industrial professionals. We've got tons of information out there. Remember, we're all about education. We're definitely all about collaboration, and you need to innovate, but you need people that you can trust to work with in your innovation journey. All right. Thank you again, be bold, be brave, daring, greatly hanging out with Steve Carter. You're going to change the world. Thank you very much. We're gonna have another great conversation coming from SMRP shortly so don't go away.
Transcript
This episode of industrial Talk is brought to you by RDI Technologies. RDI Technologies is the pioneer in motion amplification. Their proprietary technology enables users to see and measure motion impossible to the human eye and turning complex data into easy-to-understand videos to solve maintenance challenges quickly and safely. For more information, go to RDITechnologies.com. Hey, industrial Talk is brought to you by CAP Logistics. You want to minimize downtime, absolutely. increase reliability, you bet ensure operational profitability. Yes, you do. That means you need 24/7 365 insights into your supply chain, look no further CAP Logistics, go to CAPLogistics.com Or just call them. They're great people 800-227-2471.
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 right once
again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk the number one industrial related podcast in the universe, Steve and you can pretty much track that by data, no doubt about it. And we are broadcasting from the 30th annual SMRP conference. I'm right here on the exhibition floor. I'm looking at incredible vendors providing great services and solving doggone problems here. And now, because you are bold, brave and daring greatly. You deserve all of this because we want you to be a success. That's what that's what industrial talk is all about. Steve Carter's in the house. He's in the hot seat. And we're going to be talking about Well, Steve Carter stuff. I don't know if that's right. But he's here. He's gonna He's gonna dazzle everybody. Hey, Steve.
Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me.
Yeah, I'm all I'm all geeked out. Right? Because you're the first time this is a first time conversation we've never we've never met before we met today and is and you've never been on the podcast. And so I'm always excited when I have new people. Well,
I am excited as well. I've actually listened to your podcast in the past. Have you ever been in preparation for this job I took specifically, I mean, that's what kind of nerd I am. Wow.
I feel really pretty cool about the whole I'm touched. Because, you know, it's funny, it's, I recognize the fact that one I can geek out on us enough. I don't care man, okie calculate geek. And I'm always thinking, oh, there might be three people out there that, that like this, this and be passionate about innovation, technology, solving problems and and just being into that world. So with that said, give us a little background on who Steve is.
Steve Carter, national sales manager in heavy trucking and heavy machinery for KCF Technologies.
Tell me when you say heavy trucking, what do you mean and heavy machinery like, like mining equipment? And, you know, big ol semis and things? That's
a great question, Scott. Because there is a large range when it comes to heavy trucking. You've got your you know, your dodge 2500 and above class 45678. Those are my bread and butter, if you will. When you think about heavy trucking, you're thinking about semi trucks, you're thinking about dump trucks, you know, any number of multi axle vehicles.
So with that said, what are we doing? KCF? What about? What about? I mean, okay, so you're in heavy truck, your truck and machinery? What what does that mean? What, What problems are we trying to solve here?
So, I mean, when it comes to the KCF, we're basically a comprehensive machine health solution. We use wireless vibration sensors to transmit data from manufacturing equipment, to the cloud, and then to our proprietary smart diagnostic software, which then allows individuals who don't have a advanced degree in vibration, to better understand what their machines are doing, and how we can support them.
But but the machines are heavy truck and machinery,
you know, it's you're talking fans, pumps, motors. Everybody's got the same twin blower fan out of Chicago. So a lot of the assets are similar. You know, we go into sectors that KCF so I'm in the automotive sector. So everybody who works in this sector, you know, it's basically the same type of assets across the board. Now, there will be similar assets across you know, every sector, but you know, we try to hone it down for automotive that way. You know, we really specialize and probably worked on an ad said at another plant so we can better understand yours
do you take into consideration the location of the asset, so that fan, that motor in Michigan, is it the same as the fan motor down in Alabama,
you know, you're never gonna get see the same. Because it's always different about, you know, installation environment, it's never the same, there are similarities, if you will, which has been able to give us the ability to build out specific assets specific models. So we've got over 200,000 years of machine health data, where we're able to build out algorithms that we can put a model on top of the fan, and be able to help you better diagnose and understand when you're going to see a flop in that asset. And what you need to do to correct it as well.
So you do that. So you've got the proprietary algorithms that you've collected all this data, so you have a fairly decent picture of that fan, that whatever I keep using fan, I would like to get sort of progressive conversation beyond a fan. But let's talk about the fact anyway. But you're able to take all of the data and algorithms and be able to to truly hone that diagnostic on that piece of equipment, that asset, given the fact that you've got all this great information on it,
we can and the great thing about our software is it also uses machine learning. So as we diagnose those faults, and then you correctly say in the software that that was the issue, you did fix it. And we've seen, you know, the the asset come out of that fault mode, going forward. Now we know that that kind of squiggly line, if you will, portrays this fall, and then going forward, we can continue to hone that and become more and more accurate as we go.
Yeah, and I would I would imagine, it's also a situation where you're, you're analyzing data, whatever that looks like, and I'm gonna continue to analyze this data. And I mean, there's, everything's fine, everything's fine. And not all data. How do you deal with I'm sorry, I digress. I just just went on a tangent here. And it's something popped into my head. If all the data if everything's fine. If everything's just reading fine. You don't need that data? Do you do? Or do you just keep on storing that way, just
keep on storing that data? You do? Yeah, that gives us the ability to have historical data that we can draw upon in the future. And then the nice thing about that is, you know, KCF has three really big components that make it such a standout company. Number one is hardware, we've got fantastic hardware, all proprietary. Number two, our software, smart diagnostic software, which you know, makes those squiggly lines digestible, for your average shopfloor worker, you don't have to have one person sitting in the background, you know, giving people the, you know, I guess the correct information, if you will, after reading through it. And the number three is we have a sentry team, which is our services department, which is a team of all level two certified vibration analysts who sit back and review that data, so you don't have to. So there's no one person at your plant sitting behind a computer, you know, eight hours a day, even though you know, your plants running 24 hours, you can have those people out working. And then we will let you know when there's an alert or there's a fault.
Yeah, gotta get some clarification. And you say, century
century, century team, and those are basically our technical analysts behind the salespeople.
So run us through the process. Back to the fan. Yeah. So we got a device out there on the fan and you're, you're you're measuring the vibration of what's going on, everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's fine, everything's fine. Then all of a sudden, things start to trend differently. But you have an analytic component. Yep. And as far as saying, hey, it's trending, it's doing some things that just be, I'm going to notify somebody we're gonna do, right. Yep. So I'm still tracking, I'm gonna notify somebody saying, hey, something's going out there. And I don't know what's going on. But there it is, you need to go grease that fan will say oh, so there is even
tell you what you need to do to correct it. So and I've actually seen this happen in real time. We've got a large trucking company on the West Coast. I was there to basically do a lunch and learn and walking through software further than installed a week prior. And all of a sudden, we were getting some alerts from your fan on the roof. And you know, it said, Hey, listen, we're having alert looks like you need to go grease that fan. So maintenance guy is sitting right next to me calls it out as the maintenance tech go up there. And in real time, we actually saw the acceleration dropped from two days back to point nine, nine, okay, and he was he was sold right there.
Along the same time with lubrication, right? There's there are many schools
of thought out there. There are many, many more than I ever imagined more than
many schools. And do you in that same analogy, you're saying okay, you need to put have X amount of this type of grease here. And from a maintenance perspective from me, yep, all I have to do is go, Okay, I got I need that type of grease, I need this amount. So the analytics and I'm, you know, I need to do that, and boom, and I can see it real time.
And you can see in real time, which is pretty cool, which leads to us being able to build heat maps right of your plant floor and let you know which shift is working correctly. So you can see the heat map that you know, when second shift goes out and does what they were told to do what they believe is the right way to provide that maintenance, you can see that they're actually maybe touching assets, they don't need to touch, you know, if it's green, you don't need to touch it, you only really need to start to work on the ones that are yellow and red. So having this real time heat map of which assets you can focus your time on, actually helps schedule, help save time and relieve the fact that right now we're going through a labor shortage is affecting everyone. So imagine if you were able to focus all your time on the assets that needed it, and not the ones that did.
It makes sense. And and so if let's take that next step forward, here's here, I come in. I'm a maintenance professional, I look at my dashboard.
Dashboards are pretty hot. I'll show you some pictures.
So I got some dashboards, which I'm always geeky about. And I'm looking at it I'm looking at all of the assets that are being tracked. And then I just look at because it's we're all about color codes. Green, yellow, red, red, bad, bad, bad. Yeah, run on out there, but you don't want I mean, organizationally, do you want you want any red? Or do you try to capture that yellow? You want to capture
the yellow? Yeah, it means you're gonna see a fault and that machine? And we're our whole goal is zero downtime? Yes. Safety? Yep, zero downtime. Yep,
yep. Because that means that asset is spinning out what it needs to be spinning out, and it needs its revenue, all of that good. You know,
you want to make sure throughput as high as possible. And, you know, that's what people are trying, they're trying to do more with less right now.
So, it begs the question, so you had me at hello, there begs the question of what what what push backs to us? I mean, what, what push backs are there? I? Well,
you know, it's it's a well known that, you know, ultrasonic is better than vibration. Right?
You say so, I'm not gonna get into that.
This is what's been thrown back in my face all the time is, you know, ultrasonic, you're going to catch the fault earlier. But then those people won't be doing Ultra sun once a quarter. Well, vibration, continuous monitoring is the best, right? Because you're going to be able to see that, because you're monitoring that asset 24/7. So our, basically, our signal foot is that you could get it down to about every 12 seconds, I wouldn't suggest that it's going to really drain the battery. But if you had an asset that you want to monitor that closely, you could do it for every 12 seconds. And people say, you know, why do you need to do it that often? Well, there's some times that an asset will go into fault mode, that nobody knows it, and it will reconnect itself, but you want to be able to capture that. So you know, they can you will to death by 1000 paper cuts, right? So catch it the first time, fix it, and then that way it's going to integrate and extend your machine help the life the machine? Yeah. So there's a lot of things that the only pushback I really get is, people don't believe it's possible. Right? So which is why we're don't don't believe it's probably possible possible to actually know Yeah, to catch these faults and be able to diagnose them correctly, which makes me you know, I'm a big believer in pilots. So we do a number of pilots, we usually like to do a pilot before we have a company buy, just because it gets them familiar with the product, it gets them excited. And then they end up buying even before the pilots over and expanding that initial purchase.
Yeah, I'm a big fan of incremental ism. Yes. Like I mean, I understand the the pilot as long as people don't get in that pilot purgatory where there's a sort of it is
great. Hey, there is a company that I'm dealing with right now that is in pilot purgatory. I'm not going to name names. No,
don't don't start reliability to trash talk in here on on industrial, definitely vote. But but the reality is, is that I agree with that. I think that but do you find the community as a whole industry as a whole beginning to sort of embrace the reality that yeah, this stuff's working. This stuff means I mean, I see the value.
I mean, I would start I'd like to think it's me, and they see the value with my sales pitch, but honestly, I've never been in a position like this in a sales position where I'd had companies call me and begged me to come out. It's it's been something that more and more people are beginning to realize that they need to do and once they do, they just can't get enough.
It seems to me as we close seems to me that it's is it a fairly decent Turn around. I mean, I mean, if I were saying, that pump right there, man that pumps important. And I come to you and I go, Steve, that pumps important. What can we do? We could do it how I shifted. I didn't want to go to a fan because I don't want to have any fans. I thought we will be talking fans. Oh, no, no,
I'm gonna be prepared to talk pop. Yeah, huh? No, it's it's just a fluke. Our vibration sensors are actually rare earth magnets. I can tell you they're very strong magnets. I put one on my fireplace, and both my kids haven't been able to rip it off yet. So the install takes minutes. Sometimes. I mean, we like to make sure that you're monitoring the correct assets. Well, yeah, you know, we're doing it the right way. But honestly, I've seen 200 300 sensors installed in an afternoon.
And then it starts, you know,
immediately. I was at an engine plant a month ago and brought my Demo Kit, which is always you know, that's never clunky. Brought my Demo Kit set up. And by the time I got back to the boardroom, we were watching their assets in real time.
And as you're looking at the assets in real time, are you able to sort of also begin to pull diagnostics and see? Yeah, that's, that's a red guy.
Yeah, we can benchmark and then we continue to improve that asset following.
While she's, I should be asking you for money. Because apparently, everybody else is asking you.
I've got a wedding ring. I just, I do too.
I want to wear earth
magnet. Oh, doesn't? Who doesn't? Really cool. The art everyone. Yes.
As you can say I was I was a bit distracted by the fact that you went around that motor thing. And you did that. And I was still thinking,
I don't get a hold of rare earth magnets. It was like, Yeah, all right. We're gonna
hear you were this isn't this is fantastic. By the way. On your as I look at your booth, I think I see your booth. Yeah, I see the corner of your that's us. Yeah, what I do see is that you have these devices, are they that does that.
Those are the water sensors. They look like little floaties they do? Yeah, I thought it was
a they're still in that stuff. I want to take a picture of one and then I'll post it and then you guys can see it. Everybody out there on LinkedIn. Anyway, how to get a hold of
a Scott, you can reach me at my email, Steve dot Carter at KCF tech.com. Or give me a call myself. 215-205-5031. I
have his card. So listener out there. Who needs to get a hold of Steve. Fair not it's going to all be out on industrial talk.com. What's his cell number? You sure you want to get there? Oh, yeah. All right. Oh, yeah. No big deal. No. sweat off my back. All right, we're broadcasting from the 30th annual SMRP conference. You get great people like Steve, and many others, delivering value solving problems. It is exciting. I like it. You like it, too. We're gonna wrap it up on the other side. So stay tuned. We will be right back.
You're listening to the industrial talk Podcast Network.
All right. Once again, thank you very much for joining industrial talk. And absolutely. Thank you very much for your support. Steve Carter, go out to his stack card, LinkedIn stat card KCF Technologies. And by the way, if you're out on video, he referenced flow in a so device. Well, the device does look like that. But if you're out there, check it out. Right there. Yep, there's the magnet. There's the device. And by the way, it's it's super he was right, super easy. So you just sit there. You got this little clap right there. And then yet, you can just pull it off. And you get to the device. There it is. That easy peasy lemon squeezy. K c, f technology. There it is right there in your face right there. All right. Thank you, again for joining. Go out to industrial talk. Give us your support. If you're an industry whatsoever, reach out to me, we're going to be at conferences, we're going to be doing a lot of things. We're going to elevate this conversation in 2023. We need to make sure that you are celebrated along with all the other industrial professionals. We've got tons of information out there. Remember, we're all about education. We're definitely all about collaboration, and you need to innovate, but you need people that you can trust to work with in your innovation journey. All right. Thank you again, be bold, be brave, daring, greatly hanging out with Steve Carter. You're going to change the world. Thank you very much. We're gonna have another great conversation coming from SMRP shortly so don't go away.
About the author, Scott
I am Scott MacKenzie, husband, father, and passionate industry educator. From humble beginnings as a lathing contractor and certified journeyman/lineman to an Undergraduate and Master’s Degree in Business Administration, I have applied every aspect of my education and training to lead and influence. I believe in serving and adding value wherever I am called.
