Tickets for the June 13 - 14 event are available now.
Compressed Air Reliability:
A Q&A with Josh Wamser
Josh Wamser, President of Industrial Compressor Solutions, is a compressed air expert.
He travels all over the world training, auditing, and teaching on compressed air. Most recently, he presented at the Hannover Messe in Germany, the world’s leading industrial trade show.
Next up for the busy entrepreneur? Josh will be hosting a seminar for plant managers, plant engineers, production supervisors, and other plant personnel on June 13 & 14 in Indianapolis. (Registration is open! Head to the signup page to snag a spot.)
To gain a little more insight into what he teaches and how it benefits the manufacturing industry – and particularly the compressed air world – we caught Josh by phone between flights on yet another busy day.
Josh, I was reading through transcripts of the last several presentations you’ve done and noticed you put an emphasis on the individuals who attend. That seems different from other lectures or tutorials on compressed air. Can you speak to that?
Look, there’s a lot of good compressed air training out there. Take the Compressed Air Challenge and the Compressed Air & Gas Institute (CAGI), for example. The Compressed Air Challenge does a fantastic job with teaching compressed air systems and compressed air knowledge. If you’re getting into the compressor industry, the fastest way to get a good baseline education and get better at your job is to learn from them.
The Compressed Air & Gas Institute excels at doing performance verification on compressors and dryers. They’ll show you how to put in efficient equipment and controls. And they’re a particularly great source if you’re a customer looking to evaluate equipment before purchase. For supply side auditing, both the Compressed Air Challenge and the Compressed Air & Gas Institute get it done.
So I highly encourage people to go to these training sessions and learn from them. But we also have to talk about the individual customer and the demand side of their compressed air, so that’s something I try to tie into all of my presentations.
What do you mean by “the customer and the demand side of compressed air”?
There’s more than just what happens in the compressor room – and that’s where I come in. What’s happening in the rest of the facility? If your demand side is untrained, if your system is not “living within its means”, then you’re continuing to just respond to waste and artificial demand. You need a volume of air for a certain process, but anything over that is artificial. Why is that? What can be done about that?
I’ve traveled the world over the years; I’ve met with incredible people across the globe who’ve been influential in my development. And I’ve found along the way that there’s not been enough training in this area that can have so much impact on the plant.
I’ve heard you use the phrase “get out of the compressor room” in other seminars. Tell me what that looks like.
What we typically see is that when your system is no longer meeting demand, you just go and buy more VSDs. Getting out of the compressor room means going out and taking control of your plant instead of assuming the problem is only in the compressor room. Looking at it systematically, I can show you how to save more money without needing to take on more capital expense.
And you’re of course going to need people to design a compressed air system that is efficient and reliable. That is always super important, but that stuff comes after mine. You work with me first, get your demand side where it needs to be, and then you go to them to get the right systems and controls in place.
So that’s what I’m getting at with “get out of the compressor room”. Because otherwise, if you overlook what I am training on — if you stay stuck in the compressor room — you’re going to continue reacting to waste and artificial demand instead of addressing their root causes. That is definitely not a lean approach to manufacturing, and it’s not even the most cost-effective way.
You presented in front of a large, diverse group of people in Hannover a couple weeks ago. For this next seminar in Indianapolis, what type of audience do you expect?
The reality is that manufacturing leaders, CEOs, directors and the like benefit from the concepts I teach in that their plant becomes more reliable and they save money. So we find they often send plant managers, supervisors, and engineers. These people will perform better in their facilities by making them more lean and reliable, and they’re going to do better at their jobs. By understanding the impact of their respective systems, they’ll be more qualified and comfortable to take care of their plants. That makes them more valuable to their employers.
But what’s great is these guys benefit individually as well. It’s absolutely true that what they learn is going to benefit the plant, but what we talk about is also going to change the way they look at compressed air systems in a broader sense. It’s not uncommon for people to comment to me that they’d never thought of something the way I explained it, or didn’t realize that there was any other way to do things aside from keeping up with the status quo. They’re going to develop individually, which leads to their personal success. I get a lot out of that part.
How does that individual development piece help your attendees?
People are going to come away with a very competitive understanding of compressed air that makes them more marketable. We’re going to teach what's important at the C-suite level. They’re going to learn to speak the same language. Competitive knowledge, a deeper skill set, and learning what’s important and how to communicate at an executive level is taking a huge step toward advancing your career.
Let's talk about the title of your seminar, “Reliability in Compressed Air Systems”. What does reliability mean to you?
My definition of reliability doesn’t matter. I don’t have a compressed air system, or employees whose livelihoods depend on my ability to get materials out of the door. But I can only imagine that if I was in that position, I would need compressed air to be a non-factor in my world.
Take a project manager’s perspective for a minute. When you’re talking about scheduling, you’re asking, “Who’s holding us up?” As a compressed air guy, I never want to be on the critical path (the critical path is what’s holding it up). I don’t want to be someone that blocks the path to reliability. I should be a non-factor. Whatever is preventing production from running smoothly had better not be compressed air-related. That’s what I mean when I say “reliability”.
When you say that compressed air for a plant manager, or anyone concerned about production in the facility, should be a non-factor, what does that actually look like in the real world? Or in a plant?
So we look at the compressed air system’s design, utilization, and condition. If even one of those three things has the ability to impact production, plant managers and supervisors need to know about it. And/or we need to have a solution for it. If the system is designed where they have 100% backup and they have the quality of air required, we need to solve any problems that may affect those things.
How are those issues typically solved today?
There’s two types of people in these situations, right? There are process-side guys, and then there are the compressor people.
Process-side guys are selling the FRLs and making sure everything is good on the process side of the plant. The compressor people are the folks in the compressor room. A lot of times they’re not controlling things; they’re just doing services as instructed.
Let me frame it this way: I tell my team all the time that employees are either good, better, or best. At the entry level, employees are good if they’re doing tasks that you’ve asked them to do. They’re doing better if they can see the big picture and how things affect the company. That’s better than good. The best employees are driving us to be better. That’s the most you can ask for from an employee, right?
So back to how compressed air issues are typically solved today. Let’s use the same analogy. Some of us are just doing the service our company asked us to do, and that’s good. Some of us are aware of how our work affects the plant, and that’s better than good. But the best of us are actually driving our systems to be better, more efficient, and more reliable. Driving plant reliability and efficiency is the best way to solve compressed air issues affecting the plant.
How can your training teach individuals to be a driver for better, more efficient, more reliable systems?
We have 5 breakout sessions. In these breakout sessions we’re evaluating different, but common, situations that all have different potential solutions. But here’s where it gets interesting: we’re not sitting in front of a dry erase board or projector and just telling you whose brand and technology will do x, y and z.
We’re actually evaluating real solutions and looking at their reliability, efficiency, liability, and impact. We then determine if all of these things are running or broken. We look at them considering upfront cost and life cycle cost, and show multiple ways to fix them. And we very quickly display that the reality is that there is no one way to answer each issue. We open you up to a more expansive way of thinking about your compressed air system.
When you have a problem in your plant, you might talk to a person who is trying to solve your demand issue by selling you a compressor. But remember, the question is not how many VSDs you can buy to accommodate demand — it’s how can you be best? How can you drive reliability and efficiency? In order to do that, you need to know how your decision impacts reliability, efficiency, and the plant overall.
We’re teaching you to think and evaluate in a different way, so that you can be empowered to make the right decision for you and your facility.
Any final thoughts before we sign off?
I believe having our ideas challenged is the best way to advance ourselves and our industry. I want to invite my fellow compressed air and manufacturing colleagues to come to the seminar and challenge the things we’re discussing. Lively debate and discussion are what make these events such great networking opportunities. But also, it’s how we discover new things and solve problems. If we don’t stay teachable, we get stagnant. That’s a huge impediment to progress.
The reality is that there’s not a magic air compressor that is going to make you perfectly squared away. We should understand that. So let’s challenge ourselves to continue to find leaner, more reliable ways to operate our air systems.
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To get a ticket to the Indianapolis seminar, head to the eventbrite page now.
Per interview with Two Modern Digital, April 2023.
