Meet Your Team, Part III: Our Management

Greg Hines, President	Rich Somplatsky, Sales Director	Jim Kasperik, Operations Director

At Swagelok Pittsburgh | Tri-State Area, company success is truly engineered from the top down.  There, the President, Sales Director, and Operations Director all hold major Engineering degrees that enable the trio to not only provide superior technical support to customers – but to optimally manage the 20-person firm….today and into the future.

Greg Hines, President, earned his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.  He says the problem-solving skills he learned in school are routinely applied in virtually all customer (and internal) interactions.

Rich Somplatsky, Sales Director, agrees, stating that his Mechanical Engineering degree from Penn State University (plus a second Physics diploma from Edinboro University) makes “problem-solving” an integral part of his working DNA.

Operations Director Jim Kasperik, who received his Mechanical Engineering degree from Carnegie-Mellon University, is also totally onboard with Greg’s and Rich’s assessments.  Jim’s Engineering pedigree pushes him to continually learn more about Swagelok products and applications.  It also helps him better understand and re-evaluate the company’s Fabrication capabilities and projects.

(Greg and Jim have also earned Masters of Business Administration degrees.)

Two recent initiatives brought respective Engineering educations into play for the three SP-TSA leaders:  the company’s rollout of a 2018-2020 Strategic Plan and, secondly, an ongoing effort to have customers perceive the firm as a High-Performance Resource versus simply a premium-quality fluid-system Componentry supplier.

“Part of the objective for a new Strategic Plan was to ensure that we’re evolving with our customers’ needs,” says Hines.  “We had to construct a roadmap that continues to strengthen and build upon our world-class products and customer service, while also expanding our capabilities to help solve customer application and operational challenges.  We’ve built a dynamic plan that we feel will bring even greater value to our customers and secure our ongoing success – now and for the next few years.”

Somplatsky added more regarding the brand-differentiation angle:

“Our customers have various capabilities with which to solve challenges.  So, in order for us to create meaningful and unique customer interactions, we need to continually position ourselves as more than just another product vendor; we need to build and grow a solid base of value-added services to supplement our outstanding product lines.”

And, of course, regular and detailed communications play a critical role to keep the inside team apprised of all Strategic Plan and perception-change developments, per Kasperik:

“It may sound a bit of a cliché, but we need to always check to see that all of our associates are on the same page concerning strategic changes and our overall ‘Bigger Picture’ messaging to current customers and prospects.  Getting everyone to speak the same language on both initiatives requires dotting our i’s and crossing our t’s – very elementary Engineering concepts, actually.”

All three Management Team staffers also apply their general Engineering learnings and logic to other aspects of the company’s business:

“Customer facetime is extremely limited these days,” says Somplatsky.  “So, when we do get the chance to get in front of a customer, we must bring real value to such an opportunity…to prove to the account that we take access to their applications and problems seriously…and that we have solutions that will make the facility or project more productive and efficient.”

Kasperik chimes in about the technical support the company provides its advocates:

“First, we focus heavily on teaching our inside and outside sales personnel the inherent technical advantages our brand offers.   That way, everyone here who answers the phone or visits an account can provide meaningful recommendations that enhance worker safety and site productivity – whether related to rotating equipment, fabrication, or typical fluid-handling applications, no matter how complex the user’s challenge.”

As Hines summarizes:

“Our customers have needs that are varied and dynamic.  Thus, our primary goal is to bring the ‘right’ ideas and solutions to our customers at just the ‘right’ time.  That’s how we strive to engineer an optimum customer experience.”