Solving Problems, Empowering Industries, and Impacting Lives

Welcome to your relevant solution, a podcast powered by relevant industrial. In each episode, we'll explore how relevant brings together the finest technicians, engineers and designers in the world to help industrialized businesses find answers and deliver results. Got a crisis brewing? We have your solution, your relevant solution. Move on. And welcome to another episode of your relevant solution, a podcast brought to you by relevant solutions I'm your host, Tyler Curran. Thanks so much for joining us for another episode of The show today. I'm thrilled to welcome Lance Bradshaw on the program. He is the Honeywell business unit manager at relevant solutions. Lance, welcome. Hey, Thanks for having me. Tyler yeah, I'm thrilled to have you on today. Lance and before we dive in and go to much further and talk some more about relevance solutions and that sort of thing here today, I wanted to give you the opportunity just to tell us a little bit about yourself, about your role within the company and also a little bit about your history, how you ended up at relevance. Yeah, I'd be glad to. Well, relevant solutions is, as the name implies, a broad spectrum solution to customer needs. It's not just a parts reseller like most distributors or channels for manufacturers. We represent the world's largest companies. Obviously, Honeywell's $188 billion company. Last time I checked, you know, their aviation, their defense, they're in every home with the thermostats and the HVAC products. But we specialize in process, measurement, control, analytics and more of what they call Honeywell process solutions division of their company. Now, a lot of the technologies come over from the defense industry. I mean, we utilize some of their sine wave radar technology in level controls and things that make us unique in the technological aspect. But what I really want to talk about today is not so much our vendors, but more about relevant solutions. My background is pretty clear and concise. In college, I majored in business and had a full scholarship in ROTC and branched into aviation and spent a few years active duty in Special Operations aviation community, a unit called the 1/60 Aviation Regiment that came out of the Jimmy Carter rescue attempt in Iran. And we developed night vision goggles, flying operations. And after I left active duty, I went in the National Guard for a while in Oklahoma. There was a battalion here that was a reserve component of the 1/60 aviation Special Operations regiment. And then I spent my last few years teaching at the War College as a Lieutenant Colonel at Fort leavenworth, Kansas, and I gained a lot of insight, planning and execution type of strategic level information and knowledge and processes and procedures and best practices that I could apply to the business world. After that, I left and went to work for a major industrial instrument company for several years, and then I went to work for another worldwide automation company that specialized in Pneumatic and electro automation and process and controls and was a business leader in that company. And before leaving and retiring from the military completely after 20 years and starting a few patents and developing some assistive and medical equipment, and then finally coming back to work for precision and gauge, which was purchased by relevant solutions. And that's kind of leads me to what I want to talk about today is the capability of relevant solutions and how a company like this could have been such a great asset to me and my other business ventures. Is that does that answer the question? Yeah, I think so. And I think that sets us on a great course for the rest of the episode because yeah, we want to talk about these solutions. And, and one thing that I'm curious about is how relevant differentiates itself and what's maybe different about your business model from other companies who might work in similar areas? Yeah, absolutely. You know, I came from PFG through the acquisition and I was used to a company that resells parts, you know, whether they be the big names, whether it was Honeywell or Parker or General Electric or all the biggest, best names. And we purchased by relevant solutions. It it was a transition that was very eye opening, that the company was capable of taking customers' problems and resolving those providing a relevant solution or customer's visions or desired business results, and bringing those to fruition, whether it be for the individual engineer in engineering, the machine builder who was trying to improve and become more competitive or simply just the acquisition element of the company where they were trying to provide relevant supply of parts and technologies to their company at all. Levels relevant provides, whether it be our engineering solutions group, whether it be the traditional stocking distributor. I in the 1990s, there was a big movement in industrial distribution for distributors to get away from inventorying and stocking products. They were trying to be just in time delivery middleman and improve their profitability by not having inventory carrying costs. One of the things that we've brought back in our company, relevant solutions, especially with the supply chain issues we've seen since covid, is that we're stocking millions worth of just, say, Honeywell transmitters on the shelf. We have the capability as an extension of the factory being certified to take the modular design of those components, mix and match and provide just in time delivery off the shelf with a fully tested, certified and tagged component to meet customers' needs in one day if necessary, as well as special modifications like remote seals and things that I've actually seen our people get together on a Friday night and ship out Saturday morning FedEx to a customer when they're down. So something as basic as what the traditional distributor has said they have the capability of doing in the past, relevant solutions does all the way to taking a customer's design criteria or their vision of a machine and actually engineering and building that for them and then putting the world's finest products on that to make it the most competitive machine and a machine in that industry segment or for that competitive niche and function mean you know, you mentioned supply chain there and supply chain, you know, has gone from maybe being a niche topic before to something that everyone has been talking about over the last couple of years. Right so you mentioned there just how relevant solutions mitigated in kind of got around some of those supply chain challenges. Just tell us a little bit about how you're planning and the way that the company operates really helped navigate and maybe circumvent some of the challenges that you were seeing across a lot of the rest of the industries that you work with. Yeah, I'd be glad to. I mean, that is really at the core of our parts resell is that value added that we bring meeting the customers, overcoming the customer's concerns, objections, pain points. You might say we do that with a program on the transmitter. Specifically, we have it on other programs as well, but transmitters that detect and that are the lifeblood of the process of an automated process, they're the, you might say, the nerves of the human body, the brain being the controller. But the nerves and the fingers, the six senses, is what they give us for process control feedback to close a process control loop will have instruments that are work for pressure, temperature, level flow that they sense every part of the process going on within a plant and feed that information back to the control center, which Honeywell also manufactures and supplies and relevant solutions integrates into the customer's process. But what we've done with what we call the smart line anytime program is we have a lot of highly experienced individuals with 30 plus years experience in the instrumentation industry, a lot of them specifically with Honeywell to that I can think of now Bob C and Craig s that both were retired from Honeywell and came to work for relevant solutions. They put together a program, bob, specifically that allows us to stock about 4 and 1/2 million worth of configurable product in our smart line anytime instrumentation division, they take the modular design, which is unique to the Honeywell transmitter, and they have been extended and certified as a Honeywell factory to mix and match those products and then test and re tag them and ship them out overnight for a customer. So what that's allowed us to do is not only I used to sell the product based on its performance merits, it's a faster response time, it's completely stable. It doesn't require a customer to do annual calibrations to meet their corporate insurance requirements. It's got all these unique features that make it a better product. It was designed by a better company. Honeywell was the first company to have the smart transmitter, and they improved on that with their smart line transmitter a few years back. But it's the modularity that allows us to do our thing and provide the immediate response to customer needs. This became paramount importance a couple of years ago during a Houston freeze. We know there's a lot of refineries, process organizations that did not have I did not see a hard, long term freeze coming. And they had a lot of transmitters, multiple brands. Honeywell, in some cases was included, but a lot of the industry leader. At that time is another company that their transmitters froze up and they were not able to meet the supply and demand. We were off the shelf and as a result, we established ourselves as an integral member of many of those companies, those refineries, those oil companies, chemical companies and such that could look to. Resolve an immediate and critical concern with our supply chain. Since then, we've beefed up this program, and fortunately we did. Because of the COVID situation, the supply chain issues, we've become the mainstay for many of these companies to allow their processes to run and to allow us all to have the oil and chemicals that we need in our Great Society here in America. So without relevant solutions, we may be seeing higher gas prices. We may be seeing fuel lines at the pump like we did in the 70s. So, yeah, relevant solutions just in the aspect of our smart line anytime program has really had an impact on American's quality of life and it goes far beyond just our smart line anytime program. No, I think that's really well put and I think does a great job just explaining how relevant is really at the heart of so many things that people interact with on a daily basis, maybe with never having any idea how integral of a role that relevant solutions plays to these sorts of things. Like you mentioned, you could see longer lines at the gas pump, you know, and all of these other areas and kind of ways of life, that relevant touch is what is that like for you to play such a crucial role in the lives of so many? Just because relevant really does touch so many different industries, like you mentioned, kind of as you were talking about your role there at relevant earlier on in the conversation, you do so much and relevant is involved in so many different industries. What's it like kind of playing such a crucial role in what people probably take for granted on a day to day basis? Well, quite frankly, I love it. I can't imagine doing anything else. You know, being in the military. I went in my life goal was to just to make a difference was to contribute to help people. I found that I can do that in this position at relevant solutions. Fortunately, I've developed to a point to where I can order inventory. I can. Recently, I saw a shortage in the industry of a communicator for people to have a modular and mobile communicator, to walk through the plant and assess the health indication, or to change programming, set points or do any kind of technological interface with any kind of a controller or an instrument within a plant. Honeywell came out with a new technology of a communicator. I, I assess the need in the industry and ordered 600,000 worth of inventory of those parts those communicators recently and of we've met the industry need for that. So I like I like the ability to study the industry to look at what's coming to look at some of the pain points. You watch the news, see what's going on, look at wastewater, look at the government moving the EPA with their $50 billion grants to municipalities to upgrade and centralize their process and control of wastewater treatment. Or the assessment that the EPA did that there were $2 trillion gallons of drinking water wasted last year and on our current path, we'll be out of drinking water in three years. So they've looked to modernize that Honeywell is involved. We're working with manufacturers that are making this automated equipment for city municipalities. If we look at the military activity of the last 20 years, you know, we've had a couple of wars that were started as a result in 1911 that went on for 20 years, I think, finalized in Afghanistan with the leaving of our equipment and some friendly personnel. We lost a lot of equipment there. That has to be replenished. A lot of our efforts are going into working with military contract firms to modernize and increase efficiency of the manufacturing testing and certification of military, particularly aviation equipment across the United States. We've we've taken older technologies that were made by OEMs to those industries. We have redesigned the process and made it much more quick, much more efficient, much more cost effective for the American consumer to provide and certify this military equipment. So whether it be water drinking water supply, whether it be wastewater, they're assessing all of the chemicals and wastewater, the viral content to look at covid, to predict other diseases, to predict the health of Americans. Now we're involved in all of that. It's not just oil and gas and chemical. It's military, it's aviation. Our unique technologies and the experience level and the investment that relevant solutions has can bring all this to fruition. So worldwide efficiencies, energy and safety, safety is a big part of anything we do. So yeah, relevant solutions is very unique. If not to say the only company I know of with the capability to provide these services and these products to the customer. Now, what does the future look like as you look forward and kind? Project out. What are you most excited about for the future of what you're doing now at relevant solutions? Well, from a strictly performance business perspective, we've been since I've been in this position, we've grown about 200% a year. So we're doubling our sales each year. And like I said, it's just providing those core services that customers need that have been abandoned by most of our competition. The industry leader right now is not even taking most of their customers calls because of supply chain. If they do quota delivery, we're seeing a minimum quota delivery of 17 weeks with extensions on that delivery, as the customers say. Where is the product? So what I like, what I see is I see us continuing to double. Our sales can double double our volume. I know we've made major investments in the last year and shifting some assets to our engineered services division and our engineered products group that builds machines for the customers to their specifications. So I see I see a great growth, I think relevant solutions and it's holding company is probably one of the best investments in America a person can make right now. So we've covered a lot of ground and talked a lot about what relevant solutions does all the different areas that you touch into, everything from water, like you said, military supplies, all these sorts of things. What do you want people to walk away with from this conversation? Maybe know and understand if they weren't really aware of relevant industrial solutions before this episode, what do you hope people will take away from this conversation? Well, I think if you have a pain point most immediately for supply chain, relevant solutions is the answer. It's because of the technology and the adaptability of that technology to make it just in time delivery of these high performance instrumentation products. The same with some of the machines we build. We can do it quicker, more cost effective, and with the latest, greatest technologies. But that's kind of an immediate thing. I think long term, what they need to realize and I look back on my days as you might say, an inventor when I was designing assistive shower chair for disabled veterans, where instead of the VA sending out a CNA, a certified nursing assistant to bathe a legless or a paralyzed or traumatic brain injury patient, and kind of throwing them around and washing them with a rag and and a brush and their privates and the loss of dignity that these soldiers were feeling. There was a high suicide rate, as we all know. There's, I think, close to 300,000 soldiers in the last 20 years of these two to I would call illegal wars that we entered into after 9/11 that committed suicide. There's an average of seven anti depressants and psychosomatic drugs these soldiers have been put on. And I designed a shower chair so that they can have their dignity restored. Fully automated shower system that is a reclining chair with nozzles that would mix soap and antibacterials into the water and would atomized that water in a spray that would break the surface tension, the skin, fully cleaning the body and all the perineal areas of the body and rinsing. So an individual might put a flat screen TV on the wall now and look forward to his shower and his independence and restore the dignity of life. In that process of designing that equipment, I did not have subject matter expertise in a lot of the areas. It's it was a struggle. It was a two year process. It was about a $370,000 investment on my part. If I had known about a company like relevant solutions that knew close with flow control processes that had Honeywell single and double loop control controllers at a cost effective price that was able to fabricate the equipment for me, I might have been able to design that, have a working prototype within months instead of years at a greatly reduced cost. And I could have reached the market that I wanted to market much quicker at a higher profit margin and been much more effective than what my sole goal was, is to help people. So I see the greatest benefit of relevant solution is to bring the American dream back, that an individual can conceptualize a need, he can bring it to a company like relevant solutions. And I say right now I know of no other that can do this and sit down with our engineering group, design a process, utilize the finest components which most inventors are not aware of. All the technologies out there that would contribute to the performance of their vision, product and relevant solutions can bring that to fruition in a quick and cost effective manner. Very, very well put. The website is relevant wrksolutions.com/jobsnow if you want to reach out. If you would like to learn more, get in touch with people like Lance and ask questions and read more about the things that they do. Relevant wrksolutions.com/jobsnow is the website Lance Bradshaw Honeywell business unit manager at relevant solutions. Lance, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the show today. I hope we can do again soon. I enjoyed it. Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely and everyone, Thank you for tuning in to another episode of your relevant solution. We'll be back soon with more episodes of the. Show more conversations just like this. But for now, check out previous episodes of the podcast. You can find it on Apple podcasts, Spotify. Wherever you get your podcasts these days, you can find your relevant solutions. So go there. Find more episodes of the podcast to hold you over until we are back soon with new episodes. So stay tuned for those. But for this episode, for Lance Bradshaw and Tyler Kern. We'll talk to you next.