An Interview with Director of Operations, Jim Kasperik

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania (March 29, 2016) - For the past five years, Jim Kasperik has been the Director of Operations and Associate Development here at Swagelok Pittsburgh | Tri-State Area. Before joining our team, he worked at Kennametal for 14 years focusing on engineering and business development. He currently manages our day-to-day operations at our headquarters.

“I manage a group of 13 folks here. Rich [Somplatsky, Director of Sales] and Rudy [Frank, Director of Services] are my counterparts,” Jim says. Rich manages the sales team, Rudy manages the services team, and I manage the inside team. The inside team is in charge of everything from a customer facing side. So orders, including inquiries, quotes. We process accounts receivable, accounts payable. We take care of all the fabrication work that we do here. My role is make sure that runs well. That takes up a large part of the day.”

Most of Jim’s work is centered in our offices, but he occasionally visits sites to address customer concerns. “If I do [visit a customer site], it’s for a specific customer request -- if there’s something the customer wants to discuss...[such as] pricing…[or] contracts,” he says. Jim’s team coordinates sales coming in from Rich’s team in the field. “Our salesmen, essentially, create the business and we take the orders,” Jim says. “[My team is] more reactionary, waiting for those phone calls, whether it’s someone calling out of the blue or a salesman calling with an order.”

Jim believes the PV&F associates are one of our company’s greatest strengths. “I love the people. I feel very devoted and attached to them. We have an amazing group of people who will go to any and all lengths to figure out how to solve a customer issue and make a customer happy,” he says.

Jim continues, “It sounds like a cliche when you talk about customer service, but that’s what we were born on 50 years ago, and that, from what I’ve heard, is how we’ve grown up and now, with me being here 5 years, hasn’t changed. I love coming to work to see how we can make things work. We’re really good as a team at thinking, not just doing the job, but really good at making sure that we come up with a solution that’s good for the customer and good for us. We’re not always in a cookie-cutter position where everything is the same. I like the variety of what we look at and the ways we can solve our problems.”

That dedication to finding the best solutions has led to important changes for our company. “We are definitely more tech savvy,” Jim asserts. “For instance, when I came on board -- and I’m not taking credit for this -- [I expected] certain kinds of computer systems and certain kinds of phone systems, and quite frankly we were very antiquated in a lot of that...We were behind in technology.”

“Now...Our PV&F team utilizes iPhones and iPads. Our phone system is brand new. We’re always looking for new ways to become more efficient and faster, to produce things with less mistakes. For instance, in our warehouse when we’re shipping and receiving, we switched a lot of the ways we do our daily tasks in order to limit the chance for error. These changes help ensure that our customers receive what they requested and it is done right the first time.”

Jim believes our company’s growth has been tremendous. He also sees room for improvement in the coming years. “I think we have to get even better on the technology side,” he asserts. “What we’ve found is that the ability to be more accurate and do things faster...if you want to grow the way we need to grow or want to grow and be in the positions we want to be in, we have to find economies to scale, and we have to find ways to be productive with the great associates we have.”

Part of that improvement is possible because of the relationships Jim maintains with other Swagelok distributors. “The really cool thing about Swagelok is that we’re always looking to build and share best practices,” he says. “I am part of a peer group that meets twice a year. The peer group is made up of five operations people from all over the country. The members of the group have become good friends and we share new ways to do things. If someone shares an idea from their warehouse, we may use that same idea and come back to make ourselves better.” This constant search for improvement ensures you get the best service and value.