Geiger Pump & Equipment Company President Christopher S. Brown answered some questions from Pumps & Systems as it pertains to the state of the industry heading into 2022.
What are your thoughts regarding COVID-19 vaccines for employees? Has your company instituted a mandate?
We continue to encourage our employees to get vaccinated and get boosted as recommended by the CDC. Geiger has not instituted a mandate, and has enjoyed a high level of vaccination amongst our team. Of the many influences involved, a substantial percentage of our customers are also requiring us to be fully vaccinated in order to work on-site at their facilities. The health and safety of our team remains our top priority.
How have any price increases of products or materials impacted you or your company?
Supplier price increases remain at unprecedented levels in terms of both frequency and volume. When coupled with supply chain disruptions and the related degradation of lead times, the overall volatility is our biggest ongoing challenge. Customers count on Geiger as a key partner supporting profitable operation and maintenance of their facilities. We expect supply chain issues to persist throughout 2022 and beyond.
What needs to happen in regards to industry improvements?
In the short run, the industry needs to get our supply train back on track. Predictable and reasonable equipment availability – even for the most basic commodity items – remains elusive and is to the detriment of our great customers and the economy at large. While not unique to our industry, these challenges are felt acutely as pumps and related equipment are so central to many customers’ operations.
In the longer term, the industry needs to continue and improve its leverage of IIoT (industrial internet of things) and similar technologies to improve both reliability and efficiency of operations. Local and regional partners can offer ever more comprehensive predictive services that anticipate upcoming maintenance requirements for our customers and participate fully with technically expert service in a planned work environment rather than a reactive-to-failure mode. Significant economic value and operational uptime improvements are available from these efforts in conjunction with the strong local customer intimacy of companies like Geiger and others.
What industry trends are you seeing as we go into 2022?
Mergers and acquisitions at both the manufacturer and local distributor level remain a top story. Strong valuations fueled by equity interest in exposure to our general industrial market footprints, coupled with generational turn-over at some of the largest and most successful industrial distributors has resulted in a flurry of acquisitions and ownership turnover. As we move into 2022, we expect notable and impactful changes to continue.
Distributors like Geiger will increasingly support our customers with continuity of service and related tribal knowledge surrounding their local operations as staffing turnover and shortages persist at their sites as well. We see opportunities to partner more than ever with our customers to offer a knowledge bridge for their operations, reliability, and other key teams within their organizations.
What’s on your mind?
Recruiting and retaining employees in the pump and equipment business is as challenging as ever. Geiger has worked hard to create a great culture, attractive work environment and enticing career paths for our teams. That said, we are challenged as much as ever to cement methods to effectively share our internal expertise and experience with our newest employees. Beyond product training, we need to find ways to download and make accessible our decades of experience in an easy to access format for current and future members of our team. The turnover of some of our most experienced people to retirement will be a challenge for many companies like Geiger – not just to replace their work product, but their coaching, mentoring and experience.
What keeps you up at night?
Growth. Given all the constraints on the economy, supply chains, and our customers, how can we grow our business faster? Growth is an all-encompassing mind set for us, driven by collaboration and continuous improvement. Geiger’s place in the value chain faces pressure from a range of factors such as suppliers operating with less staffing and more automated business processes, to customers seeking constant commercial process improvements and operational excellence from their key suppliers – us! With ever more energy being consumed in operational challenges, how do we maintain focus and answer the call to grow our business profitably? Keeping our focus squarely on the customer, speed and reliability will be the keys.