Emerson's John Sanders joins our continuing series of podcasts to share his insights on the process of effectively planning and executing plant shutdowns, turnarounds and outages. He also shares a surprising passion about chasing tornadoes, so make sure to listen in!

We hope you enjoy this podcast and please send me a note about other Emerson experts you'd like to hear from.

Transcript

Jim: Welcome to the Emerson Automation Expert's podcast series. I'm Jim Cahill and today I'm joined by John Sanders. John is Emerson's global director of shutdowns, turnarounds, and outages. He has a business degree from St. Cloud State University and an M.B.A. from the University of St. Thomas and has been with Emerson for almost 20 years. Welcome, John.

John: Thanks, Jim. I appreciate you having me on today.

Jim: Well, it's great you could join us. I always like to start with our Emerson experts by asking what made you decide to pursue a career in services in the process manufacturing industries?

John: Well, that's a great question. Most of my career I spent at Rosemount supporting the instrumentation there. So a lot of my career was spent talking to customers about the instrumentation needs. Now it's always about the devices. And what I've learned over time is that customers...really there was a big gap when it came to once they get the devices, how do they maintain them? How do they utilize them and leverage all the technology, the bells and whistles that come with them? So I really saw a big gap and opportunity there for Emerson to help our customers better understand the technology, be able to leverage our technology better which in the end you know it supports the brand, it strengthens the brand. So that's why I saw a good opportunity to help our customers.

Jim: Yeah and that's so important. You can have the best technology in the world and if you're not applying it to deliver the value that it can then you're not getting what you can from it. So that's really good. So tell us about some of the market trends and opportunities you're hearing from these manufacturers that you interact with looking around these lifecycle services.

John: Oh, I'll tell you I've always sought after talking to customers and interacting with them just because you know that's how we learn. That's how we learn what their needs are. And whenever talking with customers it seems just as we've all heard they're losing a lot of personnel. You know tenured, senior technicians that know the plant inside and out, they're losing all that experience and knowledge. And so what I'm hearing from manufacturers is they're looking for experienced technicians and experienced automation professionals that can come into there and supplement their feet on the ground in there. And again, it's more than just turning the ranch but it's that level of knowledge. You know I get this question all the time from customers, "Well, what level technician are these guys?" And the first thing I tell them is, "They're tenured, they're certified, these guys aren't you know fly-by-night technicians, they're very experienced, they've been certified by the manufacturer and there's an ongoing education program for them as well."

So it's really important for our customers to understand that our technicians are extremely experienced, extremely educated and they don't have to worry that when we come to their plant we're gonna bring a culture of safety and we're gonna bring all that experience to their site to work on their equipment. And that's what I see that's really important to them.

Jim: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The way we can supplement in that way. Given this rapidly advancing technology landscape that we all find ourselves whether in our personal area or in the world of industrial automation, how are digital transformations and IIoT changing the way we as Emerson engage with our customers?