Tomm Frungillo from Imperial Systems joins us from his home to talk about innovation. Tomm talks about our flagship product the CMAXX Dust and Fume Collector and how it is always in a state of improvement. Donovan and Tomm also speak on the culture of Imperial Systems and how it revolves around safety and efficiency for the customer.
Dusty Jobs Podcast Episode 5 – Innovation with Tomm Frungillo
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Donovan: Hello, and welcome to another Dusty Jobs Podcast. We’re still here in our homes filming today because of the coronavirus. On today we have Tomm. Tomm, how are you doing?
Tomm: I’m doing well, Donovan. I hope you are, and I’m glad to be here with you.
Donovan: Yeah, glad to be here with you too. Tomm, where are you sitting right now?
Tomm: I’m in North Carolina, my home office. As you know, I’m up there about a week a month, normally, and traveling all over the country other times, but like everybody else we’re at home and getting things done.
Donovan: Yeah, so Tomm’s here to join us today. Tomm, tell us a little bit about your role with Imperial Systems.
Tomm: Thank you. I’ve been with Imperial close to two years now as director of sales and marketing. I’m really trying to, along with that, spearhead innovation with the company and coming up with new and better ideas to serve our markets.
Donovan: Yeah, and that’s what we’re going to be talking about today. Innovation; some of the ones we’ve done in the past but mostly the ones we’ve done real recently. Let’s start out with where our innovations started in the past, Tomm. You’ve been in the industry, like you said, for a long time. What some things that you notice that have been pretty innovative about Imperial Systems in the past.
Tomm: Well I think when you look at the history of the company it started with innovation and creating a rep firm that turned into a systems organization that turned into an equipment manufacturer and I think its always kind of reinventing itself. About ten years ago the flagship product, the CMAXX, was created and there were a lot of innovative things. It wasn’t the first cartridge dust collector in the history of the marketplace, but it was an innovative collector with things that were designed into it. I came on to kind of continue to spearhead the culture of innovation and creating new and better equipment and new and better things for the marketplace.
Donovan: I know as I came on with Imperial one of the things that I appreciated was that how the stories I was told from the past on how the innovation was done really for the benefit of the end user. One of the things I always loved to hear is that ours has a domed roof and that came from one of our end users down in Florida who was always having rain water sit on top of their machine and said, “Hey, is there a way you guys can help me out with this?” And we came up with the domed roof. Theres a lot of different features like that that are already integrated into the machine. Just in the last year we came out with a couple new ones that I think are just great and I was hoping you could unpack those for me today Tomm.
Tomm: Yeah, well there are several. Every manufacturer of equipment or otherwise is looking, especially in this day of lean manufacturing, is trying to do things better, more efficiently. So, I think anything a manufacturer can do to help benefit the manufacturer is great. But ultimately, what we try to do, is figure out what we can do, what we can come up with that’s new, that’s benefiting the end user. Thats the important thing. So that’s the way we approached it for many years now, and certainly the past two years since I’ve been here where we’ve come up with improvements to our flagship CMAXX product, specifically the Safety Pentagon, that are five safety items that improve the end users position. That maintenance worker that has to change cartridges. Instead of looking at just how it benefits us, its always looking at how it benefits that customer.
Donovan: What are the five things that were changed out recently that make it a better and safer product for our end user.
Tomm: Sure. The main ones I think are the anti-ramp lift rails. So if you’re installing a cartridge it goes in and one goes behind it. In the past, even on our old ones and everything that’s out here in the marketplace now, you have the opportunity to ramp one cartridge pan onto the other in traditional designs. We’ve eliminated that. It’s very important so the customer is not ramping which can release dust and toxins into the air if its not seated properly. Another one is the fact that in previous units you could close the door and not have the cartridges seated properly. In one of the Safety Pentagon items we eliminate that from happening. Those are the kinds of things we look at to make sure that from an end user, from a maintenance guy’s standpoint you make it as easy and as safe as possible for them.
Donovan: Yeah, I’d say that is one of my favorite features. Theres three different ways, that if its not in there right, its going to keep that door from closing. What a better way to know if somethings not right, if the door doesn’t close? If you can’t get the door closed, you know somethings not going right.
Tomm: That’s right.
Donovan: It’s just exciting to see stuff like that, and I happen to be there during one of our brainstorming sessions internally. We were just looking at the machine and coming up with the door stop on the lift rail. It’s just great to see that at our company its not just a bunch of engineers sitting a room thinking about it. We were having a meeting with our service techs, with our sales department, and all the guys from engineering and that’s where that idea came from. I’m glad to know that you’re here to continue that on. I know you have a couple strategies for that too, right Tomm?
Tomm: Well, yeah. We’ve created a culture of innovation. So, this is not only basically sitting our whole group, not only our engineering group, our sales and marketing group, our service group, we sit down as you know, once a quarter and analyze where we are with certain things, what’s really good, what can be improved on, and then come up with improvements on existing equipment. In addition to that, what’s new? What haven’t we thought of yet? What’s going to be the CMAXX of five years from now? Ten years from now? So, its really creating a culture of innovation. That’s important. As you know, we meet on that quarterly. In addition to that, we are always asking our customers how we can make things better. Customers come up with great ideas and we try to implement those ideas.
Donovan: I’m looking over your shoulder there and I see the Shadow hanging up there. That’s one of those ideas that came from a request from one of our customers, if I remember correctly. Isn’t that right?
Tomm: Absolutely. A customer that we’ve done some work with and wanted to do more work with. We said, “Hey, where are we lacking? What would you like that we’re not providing?” They said, “We would like a small footprint, short profile, price point focused unit on particular cutting tables that we have. We don’t want this thing to be a monstrosity. We want the focus to be on our product. We want your product to be in the background, kind of in the shadows.” And so we came up with the product called the Shadow, which doesn’t overtake the money making product of the customer, which is the cutting table, but it’s a plug play, meaning that they can bring this thing right in, run power and air to it, ductwork, and it’s ready to go.
Donovan: Nice
Tomm: Yeah. It’s a short profile, it sits in the background. Turn the switch on and it runs. It does it’s job and its at a price point that they can swallow.
Donovan: Now through the innovation of building that machine I know that we designed it for that application, but we’ve found a bunch of different uses for it. It can handle weld smoke. It can handle a lot of different things. Where that product started and where it might end up are totally different spots.
Tomm: Well that’s very true. We are going to limit it in footprint because originally we wanted to keep it size limited. So, like on the CMAXX where we can go to one hundred and twenty cartridges or more, this is going to be limited to a six cartridge unit. There is a six, a two, and a four cartridge unit.
Donovan: Now, are there any other limitations on it?
Tomm: Well, there is. Part of it being a price point unit is that we’re not building it like we do the CMAXX, which is very heavy duty. So, it’s not able to handle combustible dust. That’s one of the limitations. It’s not meant to do that.
Donovan: I know that we have a lot of customers that deal with combustible dust. Speaking of that, we had a customer come to us not too long ago and talk to us about how they are having issues with their rotary airlock valves on their combustible dust.
Tomm: More often than not we’re dealing with combustible dust and the CMAXX does a great job with that. The BRF, another product, does a good job with that. One of our biggest clientele is in the blasting industry and they’re dealing with potentially combustible dust. Traditionally they’ve always had to put cast rotary airlocks, NFPA compliant, expensive, rotary airlocks on the bottom of their dust collectors. So, customers came to us and said, “Hey, are there some options here other than that?” So, again, back to the innovation drawing board came the Rhino Drum. That is a drum set up kit that is able to handle an ST-1 combustible dust, and do it safely, and meet NFPA compliance.
Donovan: I’ll tell you what, Tomm. Personally, since I’ve had the opportunity to demo that, and use it in the field, some of the features on it that I love, that we didn’t even have to do but we did anyways; the way the lid slides out of place and makes it easy to slide the drum out. That personally is my favorite feature on it. It just makes it so much easier than trying to monkey with some chains or other stuff. That’s what I’ve enjoyed about the Rhino Drum. Not to take away from the safety of that product as much as the safety of the person that’s using it, that they’re not dealing with that airlock. They’re also safe from any explosion. I mean, I’ve seen the videos. We blew that thing up.
Tomm: Yeah, of course it’s always fun to test those things for combustibility and explosion protection. I think as you know we’ve sold some Rhino Drums to not explosive applications too just because of the ease of that twist lock. People like that better than the traditional drum cover kit. Aside from that, it’s substantially cheaper than and NFPA compliant airlock. It’s very safe and addresses that ST-1 dust. So it’s a really nice product. Simple, but innovative and nice.
Donovan: One of the product I like too is when we’re talking about the hopper, and where things build up, is our Dust Level Sensor. That to me is really great. I know I’ve talked to some customers in the past, and Tomm, I’m sure you’ve seen this too, where the problem they have with their dust collector is that unfortunately no one is checking to see if they’re cleaning out the hopper. Man, that causes some issues.
Tomm: Well, it can. You know, you build up material in your drum, which if not checked can go into your hopper which can then go into your cartridge area. I have, and you probably have Donovan, most people who have been in the industry a while, cleaning out a dust collector manually is no fun. So, ideally you want to know what level of dust is in your drum, is in your collection device, and that’s what the Dust Level Sensor does. It does it at a price point that’s attractive. There have been other options out there on the marketplace. The good ones are expensive, and the bad ones don’t work very well. We’ve come up with a good combination that works well and is not very expensive. Again, we were looking at what the end user asks for and needs.
Donovan: Yeah, and one of my favorite features on that one is that it has an output so that it can do anything. Once that bin hits a certain level, it can turn your machine off, it can send a horn out, it can put a light out, whatever you wire it to. It’s just to make sure that its a safe and clean environment for whoever going out there, that its not building up. Ultimately, it’s saving your machine and saving downtime.
Tomm: Exactly. Again, the benefit of the customer. What are they looking for? What do they need improvements on? That’s the culture we’re trying to build here, the culture of innovation, the culture of continuous improvement. I think that we’ve done that, but like always, it can always be better. It can always be improved upon. So, that’s what we strive to do on a daily basis.
Donovan: Exactly. If you’re listening to this out there and you have some questions or you have some issues that you’d like us to help you solve, feel free to contact us. Write in. We’re always innovating. We’re always trying to make things a safer and healthier environment for you out there working, and working on dust collectors. If there is a way we can help do that for you, we’re glad to come up with that next product, that next solution for whatever going on. Tomm, anything else you want to say about this?
Tomm: I appreciate the time. I think we’re going to do more of these. I think, hopefully, that they’re informative for folks in the industry about technology and innovation, and of course about our products and how we think they’re the best in the industry. So I’ve loved doing this, and I’d be glad to do it again Donovan. I appreciate the time.
Donovan: Yeah, thanks for coming on Tomm, and thanks for listening.
Tomm: Thank you.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
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In this episode we go over some current events dealing with the Corona Virus. Our guest Matt Stearns, owner of Millennial Money Management, talks about the economy and what that means for the manufacturing sector. Donovan and Matt discuss what has happened to the market so far and speculate on what we can see for the future. Imperial Systems is still up and running.
NARRATOR: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
DONOVAN: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Imperial Dusty Jobs podcast. As you know, today we are doing this from home. Due to the coronavirus, we are self-isolating. But we do have a guest today via internet. It’s Matt Stearns. Matt, tell us a little bit about what you do and why you’re on here?
MATT: Hi, Donovan. Good to be with you today, along with Imperial Systems. I am the owner/founder of Millennial Money Management in Meadville, Pennsylvania. We’re a full-service wealth firm. We do financial planning and also in-house wealth management. So I’m here to talk a little bit about the economy and the market, and whatever other questions you might have.
DONOVAN: Great, great. Well, thanks for coming on. We know your time is valuable and we appreciate your insight helping us unpack a little bit of what’s going on, you know… we’re both sitting at home right now because things are a little crazy, and trying to figure out maybe how we got here, where we were, and where things are going to go, and glad for your insight on that since you watch those things on a daily basis. Let’s… how about we start about a month back. Where were we about a month back as far as the economy, Matt?
MATT: From an economic standpoint, really before the fear came into the marketplace about the coronavirus, things were looking pretty strong. Unemployment was at an all-time low, stock market at am all-time high, labor participation rate was good, consumer spending was high, people were going on vacations, and everybody looked poised for more growth in 2020. We were kind of leading up to the election here, and there were some questions that needed to be answered in the future, but from an economic standpoint things looked quite strong. And as we know, they’ve turned on a dime here recently, so there’s a lot to unpack here in what’s just happened in the last four or five weeks.
DONOVAN: Right, right. But I mean, we started off this year strong. We started off good. I know in manufacturing for us in particular, we were having a really good year at Imperial Systems, and it just seemed like almost everything happened… slammed on the brakes, flipped off the lights; it was almost like a screeching halt. Is that what you were seeing too, or… kind of bring us up to date on where we’re at now.
MATT: Yeah, it really felt like a fast-moving wave traveling all across the globe. It started obviously in China, and then when we had an economic shutdown in China for a brief period, I think it disrupted some supply chains minimally, but then it grew to South Korea, and the rest of the world started to pay attention to it, Europe and the United States, until eventually we started having cases in Italy, and we started to see European countries shut down, and now it’s here and we’re shut down. It’s disrupted global supply chains, so it’s affected a lot of industries across the board, a lot of service industries, but also manufacturing, and that’s a big result of the way that goods move across the globe, and the way we were restricting them because of the potential virus threat.
DONOVAN: I hear what you’re saying, and you know, we’ve got the kids at home right now because we’re home-schooling since they shut the schools down. We decided we should try to get a trampoline and came to find out all the trampolines are made in China… you can’t even get a trampoline in the United States. So we’re starting to see the effects now, just in our personal lives in a little endeavor trying to do that, and I can imagine that we’re seeing that across… just manufacturing in general, and a little bit of our dependency on some products being brought in from other countries.
MATT: Yeah, I think that’s a perfect example. To really speak of the extent of how serious the situation is, if we can’t get simple products like trampoline springs or whatever it might be that’s holding them back, how’s that affecting industry, and it’s alarming to me; I’m seeing disruptions in the supply chain for our defense industry, for example, because China is holding up production for things that we need to… that are in the interest of the national security, so it’s definitely a very serious situation, and we’re starting to see real economic numbers now that are being reported, that kind of show us that this has been pretty impactful and obviously most of the country’s in shutdown right now. Lucky for you guys you’re able to keep working, because of your focus on airborne health and safety, but a lot of industries are being heavily impacted and it is a little bit eye-opening to see how fickle those global supply chains are and how dependent we are on them, and they can unravel very quickly.
DONOVAN: Right. And I know for us at Imperial, being made here in the United States and being made right here in western Pennsylvania, it’s nice to be able to keep our local economy going and keep the guys working here, and also being able to help with anything we need stateside during this crisis, wherever we might be able to help out, we’re trying to do that. But so when we see that, as you start to talk about how this is affecting global supply chains, how it’s affecting… how do you see it playing out in our manufacturing sector? Do you see… if we start to look down the line, down the future a little bit… how do you think things might go?
MATT: Sure. So first of all, for the past three or four years since the new administration has come in, I think we’d seen a little bit more attention being given to the domestic manufacturing economy and the companies here in the US, getting some steel mills back up and running and supporting US manufacturing, and so that was helping, so we were watching that help, but obviously there is still a large dependency on the global supply chain. On a macro scale, we’re seeing our GDP, it looks like it’s going to be close to zero, are the projections for 2020. Q2, or Q1, excuse me, OK, so the first quarter of the year, we’re expecting GDP to fall compared to last quarter ten percent, and then another twenty-five percent decline in the next three months, so April, May, June, Q2. So it looks like the economic impact in the near term is going to be pretty severe. Those are really, really large numbers in GDP terms, so to put that in perspective, the worst quarter in a financial crisis was Q4 of 2008, and our GDP decline was eight percent, negative eight percent, and I’m talking about numbers now, ten and twenty-five percent. So this is a huge impact, and we’ve really never seen something so sharp and so sudden happen. Obviously, it’s a circumstance like we’ve never seen before. But it is going to be dramatic.
DONOVAN: I know, and you and I were talking about this before we got recording, but I remember you saying that one of the things that might help is unemployment. If we can get people back to work, that could really be something that gives the economy a boost in the arm. You got anything else to say about that? I know we were talking about that before, but…
MATT: Yeah, so obviously we just came out with our first jobless claims, so that’s people who just filed for unemployment, that was in the last week time frame since we’re recording this video, 3.3 million new jobless claims. That’s just unprecedented, and for each week here… the week we’re in now is probably going to be higher than that, the following week might be higher. So you’re talking ten million people that are going to be filing for unemployment in less than a month’s time frame, probably, is where it’s going to pan out. That’s pretty severe, and the problem or the concerning part of that is that it takes a long time for reemployment to happen. The economy could come back, get back on its feet, profitability can get back on its feet from the standpoint of companies are able to start selling products again, but companies are slow to hire back on because right now they just burned maybe a month’s worth of cash or money that they had saved up or they’d taken out more loans. So they’re reluctant to hire people back on until they get their balance sheet straightened up. So reemployment is the problem, and it traditionally takes a very long time to happen, especially after a really large spike like this. So one of the ways we can pull out of this is to rally together and get all these people re-hired as quickly as possible.
DONOVAN: Getting Americans back to work.
MATT: That’s right, and it’s got to be driven from an employer standpoint that says hey, I know we’re not in the same financial position that we were, but if the whole country pulls together and gets these people rehired, it will lessen the pain dramatically and our economy will rebound much quicker.
DONOVAN: Right. Now, I know this is not your one hundred percent realm of expertise, but if you had to just speculate on this, we’ve seen a lot of like you said, global disruption in our supply chain. Do you think down the line there might be any more of a shift toward more American companies building more American products because of just, to add some stability to their own production lines?
MATT: Well, I think there, is, has been a push, like I said, and I think it does have to do with the new administration, and that’s an apolitical statement, OK? But the problem is, and we have to be realistic about it, is the cost of manufacturing here in the United States. And so I’m not sure what needs to happen to get that sort of push back on, but if it’s another sort of “Made in the USA” type of marketing campaign or whatever it might be, to get people on board with hey, let’s rally together as a country, open up these manufacturing sites, understand that it’s going to cost more, you know, to get our inputs and materials, understand from a consumer perspective that we’re going to have to pay more for that good, but we’re supporting American jobs, we’re keeping our supply chain here in the United States, and also from a defense standpoint, you know, whatever we need from a national security standpoint, we can produce all of that if need be as well. So I think it’s a mindset thing, because we’re not going to be able to compete on price, so we’re going to have to just pony up and be willing to do it, and it’s going to be a psychological thing.
DONOVAN: Right, right. So I think that’s what we need in these times is some hope and seeing where we can go, and a clear understanding of, if we get together as a community, as a nation, what we can do to help get through this, not just by washing our hands and trying to be as safe as we can, but thinking down the line to how we can help get our economy back on line and get everybody back to work, and do what we can. We were also talking about earlier, the number one thing is we just gotta do what we can as individuals to try to be healthy and safe, so that the sooner we get rid of this health issue, we can get back to working and get the economy going. Right? Isn’t that what you’d say, Matt?
MATT: I couldn’t agree more. I think it’s a rallying cry here that this virus is impacting every single American, and it’s time for America to come together, to put their differences aside, political or whatever they may be, take care of yourself first and your family, and look after your neighbors, and the quicker we do that, employers looking after their employees, the quicker we all can rebound, get back on our feet, and get back to the way that things were, you know, just a few months ago. So I think you’re right on point, Donovan.
DONOVAN: Well, you know, our mission statement here is try to provide a healthy, safe work environment for everybody, and we’re hoping we’re going to do that individually by doing everything we can, and health and safety is one of our number one concerns here at Imperial. So just want to thank you for coming on, I want to thank everyone for listening, giving us a minute to talk about how we’re still doing strong here at Imperial and working in manufacturing. Matt, thank you for giving us a little insight onto the economics of where things are and where they were, and just once again, thanks for coming on.
MATT: Thank you very much, Donovan. It was a pleasure being with you. Hopefully we get to do it again sometime.
NARRATOR: Thank you for listening to the Dusty Jobs podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
In this podcast, we welcome President and CEO of Imperial Systems Jeremiah Wann to talk about the past, present, and future of the dust and fume collection industry. With almost twenty years of experience, Jeremiah has valuable insights into how our industry got to where it is today, and where it might go from here.
MITCH: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
DONOVAN: Thanks for joining us again for the Dusty Jobs Podcast. This is Donovan Karki, the host. Today joining me is Jeremiah Wann. Jeremiah, how are you doing today?
JEREMIAH: Hey, I’m doing great. How are you doing?
DONOVAN: Doing good! We’re here at Imperial headquarters in Mercer again today, and Jeremiah, tell us a little bit about yourself.
JEREMIAH: Well, I’m the owner and CEO of Imperial Systems, started the company about twenty years ago, and this is my first podcast with Imperial Systems. This is fun. Dusty Jobs.
DONOVAN: We’re glad to have you on, we’re glad to have you on. So today what we’re going to be talking about is a little bit of your history, a little bit of the industry history, and at the end we’re going to talk about where we think things are going.
JEREMIAH: Right.
DONOVAN: So tell us, Jeremiah, what makes you qualified to tell us anything about dust collector history. Other than that you’re the owner of the company. But what’s your history that kind of gives you…
JEREMIAH: Yeah, I never really thought about it as being qualified, but I guess my… a little bit about my background is that, you know, I kind of got into this a little bit different than most people, you know, so I grew up in this industry. I’m third generation dust collection guy, you know?
DONOVAN: Yeah.
JEREMIAH: Sheet metal guy is what we were originally, but… my grandfather started back in, I don’t know what year, but he started back right out of the army, out of World War II doing sheet metal work in serial mills, and about the time my dad and my uncle were probably seventeen years old, and they started getting involved with the sheet metal shop there in Lapel, Indiana. And so that’s kind of a little bit about the history to that point. You know, I guess shortly after that, right out of college, I contacted my dad and said, “Hey, I’d like to go to work for you.” And he was, at the time, a manufacturer’s rep. So like we have reps today here…
DONOVAN: Yeah.
JEREMIAH: He was representing another brand of dust collector, and at the time, you know, I wanted to work with him. So…
DONOVAN: So then you came on as a rep too.
JEREMIAH: Essentially, yeah. Right away.
DONOVAN: So when you’re a rep, what all does that entail? What did you have to do?
JEREMIAH: Well, I mean, so the first thing he wanted me to do with me was to teach me autoCAD and to teach me air systems and how to design them. So I learned air flow, static pressures, cam velocities, internal velocities, and all these things we talk about today.
DONOVAN: Yeah.
JEREMIAH: And you hear… all this boring stuff we talk about. But it’s been my life for twenty-plus years professionally, and like I said, before that, growing up in a sheet metal shop from the time I can remember. It’s just kind of ingrained in me.
DONOVAN: Man, that had to be some really valuable knowledge you gained growing up, just being able to be in there with your grandpa, with your dad, seeing how everything’s built, and then being able to go out… you probably have such a better understanding of how a system goes together when you’ve been the guy who’s helped build it.
JEREMIAH: I think so. I mean, I still have people come to me a lot, you know, ask me for advice on different things, on systems, on equipment design, and today I’m still very, very involved in R&D, coming up with new products. And you know, it’s not just the way I was brought up, but it’s also just our daily experience around here, so yeah, it all helps for sure.
DONOVAN: Man, I know you said you didn’t ever think of yourself as qualified, but I think you’re more than qualified to give us some information about this topic. So that’s about you… now, so you were a rep with your dad… so, how did you get into building your own collector and just starting this company? How did that even come about?
JEREMIAH: Sure, well, you know… again, my background before that was growing up in sheet metal, so I understood. You know, we built ductwork and cyclones and baghouses, that kind of stuff. But you know, we worked together for about three years, and I don’t know if you ever saw Orange County Choppers… I don’t think it’s on anymore… but when that show came out, I’m like “Wow, my dad and I could have done the same thing,” you know, so I love him to pieces and today Thanksgivings are a lot better than they used to be, I can say that. But it’s one of those things where, you know, I’m kind of a bull-headed person and I definitely like to do things my way a little bit…
DONOVAN: Yeah.
JEREMIAH: And I think he’s kind of the same way, so we didn’t work together too well when we were in business together, but certainly we do on a day to day basis now. But you know, that being said, a few years after I started working with him, I started my own company. At that point I went to rep another line of equipment, and at that time still representing a company called Crestwood Recycling who makes wood shredders. So that’s kind of an odd twist, but did a lot in the shredder industry, which helps today a lot, because we’re talking about conveying materials and stuff. And so I had that experience. But when I got out of it, a little bit of the history of that was, if you remember, that was in 2001, so I got married in August of 2001, so… times were different back then, right?
DONOVAN: Yeah.
JEREMIAH: We had the attacks in September, and had just started the business, and…
DONOVAN: So we had September 11th, you got married, and you said, “Why not just start a business too?”
JEREMIAH: Yeah, and bought a house in the mix, too, so…
DONOVAN: Oh, man! You went all in.
JEREMIAH: Yeah, man, I started with my back against the wall, that’s what I like to say. So, you know, being a fighter that worked out well for me. It kind of pushed me. But you know, getting into the business… during those days, you know, I kind of got out thinking I was going to be able to set the world on fire and start making all kinds of sales right away. And then of course with the attacks, you know, you couldn’t get somebody on the phone. Everybody was pretty tied up with everything else that was going on. So within a couple years, you know, basically I said to my new wife at the time, I said… you know, we’re newly married at the time, and I said “In order to survive, I feel like we’re really going to have to start making some stuff.”
DONOVAN: Okay…
JEREMIAH: I said why don’t we… I knew how to make ductwork and cyclones and I knew design, so I said why don’t we start, we’ll buy some machinery and start building some stuff. So kind of the way it started out is, you know, it was kind of funny because, you know, working from home for a while, I was always big when I worked from home I still got dressed up like I was going to work, you know?
DONOVAN: Yeah.
JEREMIAH: It’s just a mentality thing. And I would basically get dressed for office work during the day and work eight, ten hours, and then at night I’d go roll ductwork and weld ductwork all night. I literally did that for about a year, and I would do that till 2:00 in the morning, then get up and do it all over again.
DONOVAN: Wow!
JEREMIAH: And so she would bring me dinner and whatever, and we would do that. And finally after I was just about to collapse, I said, “I gotta hire somebody”, and I could only afford one person. And so it’s… you know, the great American story, right?
DONOVAN: Yeah. And your first employee is still with us today, right?
JEREMIAH: Yeah, pretty close to the first employee. I had a few in between there. But yeah, Russ, Russ Ryland, he’s our service manager, and yeah, you bet he’s still here. He’s been here since… I’d have to ask Russ how many years, but it’s seventeen years, probably.
DONOVAN: Yeah, he has quite a history and a wealth of knowledge in the industry too.
JEREMIAH: We could probably do a podcast on Russ.
DONOVAN: We’ll have Russ on, we will. He’ll be on at some point. So, in the industry… now we’ve got a little bit of history on how you started, so in the industry, how do you see things from where they were in, you know, 2000 to where they are today? What do you… what’s the big shift? I know for you some things have shifted. How did that all come around?
JEREMIAH: Well, when I first got into the business, I mean, I’ve done, even at the time, carbon black projects, did mining projects, did a lot of different industries, but to be honest with you our focus was really on the wood industry.
DONOVAN: OK.
JEREMIAH: I mean, we did a lot of the big furniture companies, the big ???? and particle board type furniture companies. And prior to 2008, that was a pretty big industry in our country.
DONOVAN: Yeah.
JEREMIAH: So there’s been a lot of change for me, as far as that goes. For us, in 2008 we decided we were going to run as far as we could from marketing to that industry. Now, we never left our customers and we never ran away from our base, but we certainly said, “You know what? All our marketing dollars going forward are going to be in manufacturing.” It was kind of the area we picked.
DONOVAN: Shift the focus.
JEREMIAH: Shift the focus. Even to this day, the majority of our focus is in manufacturing and metalworking.
DONOVAN: Right. So, and that shift of focus, that was a shift of product, too, here at Imperial. So that’s where you guys started building cartridge collectors, right?
JEREMIAH: Yeah, about that time, you know. Yeah, we did, and it was the best move we ever made, to be honest with you. I mean, at that time we built baghouses, we built cyclones, we built ductwork, we built rotary airlock valves, but in order to really… you know, everybody’s story is different, and I realize everybody’s business is unique to their own needs and their own… the way they’ve designed it, but the way we were headed, I mean, we were still representing another brand at the time cartridge collector line, and you know, for us, to do a global footprint that I had envisioned, that was the only way to go, to go forward and start building one ourselves.
DONOVAN: So when you go from building baghouses, wood dust industry, then you shifted into more of a manufacturing, welding… what do you see the big differences between what welding and shops were like then to what they’re like today. I mean, you’ve been watching the industry for twenty years now. In your history, what do you see?
JEREMIAH: Well, I mean, the big difference with the shops back in the day versus the shops today… I mean, we can go way back… I talked about my granddad earlier, and not to take anything from him at all, you know, this isn’t a knock, but I’ve heard the stories, back in the sixties and seventies, where they had, you know, twenty or thirty people piled up in a small shop and they were stepping on extension cords and leaders for welders and just never really cleaned up too much because, you know, the focus, kind of the old school focus, was “get the work out the door at all costs”.
DONOVAN: Yeah.
JEREMIAH: And you know, we know that even from labor today. The guys used to work sixteen hours all the time, you know, no big deal, but… so, fast forward a little bit, you know, and shops are just a lot cleaner, they’re safer, they’re more organized, and I want to say to clear the air on that, too, he runs a shop in Texas today, like I said, and it’s very clean and very orderly, so he’s doing good.
DONOVAN: So there you go, that’s a guy who’s been running a shop his whole life, and even within his own business, it’s shifted to becoming a more cleaner shop.
JEREMIAH: Well, everybody has.
DONOVAN: Everybody has.
JEREMIAH: Everybody has, and I think, you know, you and I were talking earlier, and I think that a lot of it is the focus has changed a lot to, I think, obviously the customer. When you invite the customer in, you want them to see you have a nice, orderly, clean environment. I think that’s important, but probably even more important than that is that when your employees come to work every day… and I tell our people all the time, you know, I say we spend more time with each other than we do with our own families. So essentially we’re family, and we need to act like it, so we need to clean up after each other, we need to have a nice, neat place to come to work every day. But on top of that, if you’re trying to hire new people, and today is… obviously the economy is booming today… and potential employees are interviewing you almost as much as you’re interviewing them, right? So they come in and they want to see, you know, where they’re going to be working, and so, you know, we’re very happy that we, and very proud of the fact that we run that kind of organization here. It’s very clean and very orderly.
DONOVAN: Yeah, I can imagine if you have an interview with two people and you walk through one shop and it’s clean and looks well, and then you walk through another one and it’s got a haze through the whole thing, it’d kind of be an easy pick to know which one you want to go work at.
JEREMIAH: Right, for sure.
DONOVAN: And that’s a lot of the industry, you know. Across the board, people are trying to find good people to work, and they want to keep their shop clean, and not only does that help keep the shop clean, reduce risk, reduce time on cleanup around the shop…
JEREMIAH: Right. I think that’s the point, is that you know, our air systems today, that’s one of the things they do. Not only does it make it safer from an NFPA and OSHA standpoint, but it also, you know, you have less cleanup time, right? So you have… you walk through a plant that has adequate dust collection or fume collection and it’s much cleaner, so you’re not spending all those hours sweeping up after yourselves and that kind of stuff.
DONOVAN: Right.
JEREMIAH: Funny story, you know… today I was walking up here to do this podcast and one of the guys came by and said, hey, can we program our… you know, I have an idea. And I said, what is it? So I said, what is it, because we love ideas here. What can we do to make our environment better? And so he said, well, can we set the dust collector to where… you know, this is an ambient-style system, so it’s basically just ductwork above weld cells. And so he said, can we just set it so when we hit stop, it has a thirty minute delay? And I said sure, why wouldn’t we do that, because in the back of my mind, dust collection guy, I’m thinking that’s like an offline cleaning thing or whatever that would help the filters. But no, his idea was that those thirty minutes after we leave, you know, it’s still kind of pulling that smoke out of the air, whatever’s left up there, which isn’t much, but that eventually settles down and lays on their table in the morning, because he said, when I come back in in the morning, that thing gets shut right off, and you know, there’s a little bit of dust back on my work table.
DONOVAN: Yeah.
JEREMIAH: So that was just a great idea.
DONOVAN: Yeah, well, you know, back in the day, they wouldn’t even have noticed that their desk was dirty because it was still dirty from the day before. I mean, that’s the big difference between shops now and then.
JEREMIAH: Yeah, we’re kind of picky around here.
DONOVAN: So that’s where we’re at. The industry’s kind of come a long ways from where it was to where it is now. Better standards, better… I can only imagine where the future’s going.
JEREMIAH: Right.
DONOVAN: I mean, we’re probably… I know government standards are coming up, there’s some things that are coming down that are gonna make for some people to have a cleaner environment, but in general I think people are interested in having a cleaner environment, not just in their shop but what they’re pumping outside. But what do you see the future of where the industry’s going and where dust collection’s going?
JEREMIAH: Well, you know, I think it’s getting better. You’re going to see it in more and more plants around the country. Obviously we have the government which, we have OSHA kind of dictating what we’re using this for and which… I think it’s all for the better. I mean, it helps, it saves lives, so I think that it’s good. I like all the standards that I’m hearing that are coming out. I think it’s good. You know, as far as the future goes, I mean, we… today we’re seeing, you know, obviously robotic weld cells are taking off, I mean, robotic for manufacturing in general is big, so we’re doing more and more with that type of stuff. You know, I think localized filtration is important too, so where before we used to just do big ambient systems for the whole plant, you know, I think that’s great and it has its place. But you know, I was actually just sending an email to a guy that has a manufacturing shop out west, and was taking about the pros and cons of different styles, and one of the things we really like, and we have in our plant, is, you know, smaller ambient systems that are more modular.
DONOVAN: Yeah, we were… I had the opportunity to walk through a facility the other day, and they were looking at that, and they were also looking at their robotic cells where, you know, when they get a new line in, or they get a new contract, sometimes they have to shift that whole facility.
JEREMIAH: Right.
DONOVAN: And I think that’s a little bit of what people are looking for, the flexibility within a system.
JEREMIAH: Oh, absolutely. If you have a piped in system to where it’s all close capture, everything’s hooded or flex arms or whatever, you know, we are constantly trying to do improvements around here to speed up production. But if the limiting factor was always, we don’t want to do that because we don’t want to spend money on the ductwork or redesigning the dust collection system, that’s very limiting and we don’t want to… we don’t do that here, so the ambient is much better for that.
DONOVAN: Yeah, and when you put in an ambient system, it gives you a little more flexibility of cranes and…
JEREMIAH: Oh, yeah. For sure.
DONOVAN: But I mean talking, going back to robots, going back to what’s going on, I think sometimes people think robots and they’re thinking man, well that’s gonna be… what do you have to worry about that for? Nobody’s even going to be around those robots. But you’ve been in facilities, I’ve been in facilities where there’s someone there, right there beside it, checking it out. And they’re also… that’s a big investment people are making, so…
JEREMIAH: Yeah, I get a kick out of that. I always hear people, you know, robots sound scary, like they’re going to take over and take our jobs. It’s funny, because I think sometimes it’s, you know, it’s two to one sometimes, you’ve got two guys operating the robot versus… but the idea is that it’s consistent, less chance of failure with welds, with fit parts, with precision, so I think it’s making things better overall.
DONOVAN: Yeah, and I mean, from what I’m reading, from what I’m seeing, it does seem like more automation is probably where the future is going in a lot of the industries.
JEREMIAH: Absolutely. We’re trying to do that here. We’re trying to do it with fixtures and really kind of honing in our process to make sure that we can repeat the same product over and over and over, and especially if one guy doesn’t show up one day, the next guy can come in and he has the procedures all written and he knows what to do, he has the fixtures are there, he can’t really mess it up.
DONOVAN: Right, yeah. So thanks for sharing with us about your history and where you’ve been and kind of getting a little bit of a thought where we’re going to go here, and you guys who are listening, just so you know, as these challenges come up, as things come up, we’ve been doing this for a long time. We’re going to keep doing it in the future, and so when you have questions, feel free to contact us, give us a call. We have a lot of products on our website, and I’ll do a little plug here for us about… we can help handle all these issues. And if you have more questions, feel free to email into the podcast. It’s dustyjobspodcast@isystemsweb.com. Look for us on Twitter, LinkedIn, see us on all the social media sites, and let us know what you guys would like to hear about. Jeremiah will be joining us more, he’s glad to answer any questions you might have. He’s got a wealth of knowledge, experience… so thanks for joining us. Jeremiah, you got anything, and closers here to say?
JEREMIAH: No. I’m excited about this. I’m happy to be on the second one, or third one, I’m not exactly sure how it’s going to roll out, but it’s exciting and, you know, looking forward to seeing what comes out of it.
DONOVAN: Yeah, thanks for listening, and we’ll hear you on the next one.
Keith handles the dust collection equipment for a company that manufactures protein powder. Their customers include major health and wellness companies like GNC. The company currently owns 3 Imperial Systems CMAXX collectors and one competitor system.
Protein powder applications can put any dust collection system to the test. Keith found that his filters weren’t holding up. “I was cleaning them three or four times just to get some use out of them,” he says. “The dust was getting through them and into the HEPAs. Replacing them so often was a major strain on our budget. I really needed filters that could do better.”
Solution:
Keith decided to try Imperial Systems’ DeltaMAXX filters to see if they would last longer. He reports that the DeltaMAXX filters are lasting about 4 to 6 months, longer than the others he had tried. He also found that with the DeltaMAXX filters, they were no longer seeing any dust blowback as before.
Although happy with the filter life improvement, Keith says that filter changeouts are still costing the company too much money. With some troubleshooting, Keith’s Imperial Systems aftermarket representative helped him nail down a potentially serious problem. Dust is backing up into the hoppers when the dust containers aren’t cleaned out. This common problem can drastically decrease filter life, so Keith is looking into the Dust Level Sensor to make sure containers aren’t neglected.
Feedback on Their Protein Powder Dust Collection
Keith reports that his experience with Imperial Systems is very good. He’s happy with the performance of the DeltaMAXX filters, although hopefully, it will get even better if the company uses Dust Level Sensors to control the hopper backup issues.
“I’ve gotten everything I asked for,” he says. “I plan to install these filters consistently in all our machines.”
The company plans to continue working with Imperial Systems in the future for any of their dust collection needs. While we can’t always get the filter prices quite as low as Keith would like them, we’re working with him to make sure he gets the longest filter life possible to save him money in the long run.
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