Summary:
In this episode of Unfiltered Flow ELSC, Meghann Cook and Allen Burdette welcome Bruce McKay, President of Fluid Power at Sunsource. Bruce shares his journey in the fluid power industry, discussing his early experiences and notable projects, including work on F-18 fighter simulators. The conversation explores the impact of technology and IoT on the fluid power industry, the challenges of hiring and retaining talent, and the ongoing consolidation within the industry. Bruce emphasizes the importance of a well-rounded skill set for future professionals and the need for companies to adapt to changing customer demands.
Takeaways:
Bruce McKay has over 35 years of experience in fluid power.
He started in the electronics industry before moving to hydraulics.
One of his notable projects involved F-18 fighter simulators.
Technology and IoT are transforming the fluid power industry.
Predictive maintenance is a key focus for customers today.
Hiring challenges include finding motivated and mature candidates.
AI may help address knowledge gaps in the industry.
Consolidation can be beneficial if cultural values align.
Successful professionals need a broad skill set across technologies.
Maintaining local presence is important during consolidation.
Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Fluid Power and Bruce McKay
02:26 Bruce’s Journey in Fluid Power
05:02 The Impact of Smart Technology on Fluid Power
07:52 Skills for the Future in Fluid Power
10:17 Challenges in the Fluid Power Industry
12:22 Hiring Challenges and Industry Consolidation
Transcription:
Session: Bruce, Allen, Meghann
- Meghann Cook: Hi everyone, welcome to Unfiltered Flow ELSC. I’m Meghann Cook here with co-host Allen Burdette. And today it’s our pleasure to welcome Mr. Bruce McKay to the show. Bruce has been in fluid power over 35 years and is currently the President of Fluid Power at Sunsource. Welcome Bruce.
- Bruce Mckay: Hey, welcome. Glad to be here.
- Meghann Cook: So Bruce, tell us, how’d you get started in the fluid power industry?
- Bruce Mckay: Just lucky I guess. Actually, I had a lot of hydraulics classes and physics classes when I was in college. It was just something I naturally gravitated to. My professors pulled me aside and said, man, you really ought to talk to this company in hydraulics. You’ve got a real knack for it. So I actually went to the electronics industry first and then didn’t really like where I was working and saw an advertisement for the hydraulics company they were talking about at the time and interviewed and got hired the same day that I interviewed. That was back in 1990. So it’s been a great ride.
- Allen Burdette: Bruce, sort of leads into my question. Besides the projects that you and I might have worked on, because I know they’re all your favorites, besides those, what would you say was your favorite or most interesting project that you ever worked on?
- Bruce Mckay: Yeah, there’s been so many of them. It’d be hard to pick one, but I guess I was just telling somebody this story the other day about, you know, back in the early 90s, we were working on simulators for the F-18 fighter program and the simulators themselves, we did a lot of work on the hydraulics and that kind of thing, but they could never really simulate the G-forces. So we actually went in and put some bladders in the suit and in the seats and in the helmet, and we were controlling them at different, really tight pressures pneumatically. Some of these pressures, we were controlling between 0.3 and 1.2 PSI to within 20,000th of a PSI, which, you know, working with pneumatics, as you know, is really tough to do the compressibility. So doing that back then, I thought was pretty unique. And I do remember the very first time we tested it, we had a three-star general there and I actually had a check valve backwards. Well, I didn’t, but my fabrication group put in a check valve backwards on the project. And the three-star general had the helmet on and I saw his eyes start bulging. So I hit the east top and figured out, well, what was going on and then so when we tested it the next time I tested it on myself first before I wouldn’t make sure I lived to see another day so anyway I thought it was a really interesting project and we ended up selling a ton of those things all over the country and really kind of neat.
- Allen Burdette: Was that a full motion simulator?
- Bruce Mckay: Yeah, it was a full motion simulator. This part of the project was obviously just on the seats and the suit and the helmet, but yeah.
- Meghann Cook: With everything now, Bruce, with the advancements in smart technology and IoT, how do you see that changing the fluid power industry at this point?
- Bruce Mckay: I think it’s, I mean, it is, it’s a welcome change. I love it. You know, our customers, really want to know everything about what’s going on with their machine from a predictive maintenance standpoint, from a troubleshooting standpoint, from, they want to know, in some cases, they obviously want to know the productivity of the machine. They want to know, geofence it, know where it’s located. Obviously, like I said, the biggest thing is getting machines back up and running quickly and not in the past. We’ve always had to send people out to the machine and now we can actually troubleshoot a lot of that virtually. So there’s just so many things about the knowledge of their machine and where, you know, how people are using it. We do a lot, you know, with rentals now, and we can actually tell, you know, how people, when they’re renting the machine are actually treating it and using it. And, you know, the boundaries that they’re doing it within and even just things like the safeties that are built in around. You know, like belly boxes and things we can actually tell when the users looking at, you know, what they’re controlling versus being distracted and looking elsewhere and actually stop that control until they’re paying attention and things like that. So it is, it’s providing us a lot of opportunity. And the really cool thing is the more technology there is, the more the customers need us. And, you know, it’s not only more opportunity for us, but it increases their reliance on people like us to be able to help them integrate and support that machinery. So it’s really good.
- Allen Burdette: Well, for those that are coming up in the industry and those that are in the industry looking to stay ahead, what would you say the skills and the areas of knowledge should be that these people focus on for the next five to 10 years?
- Bruce Mckay: You know, everything involves some type of control or app or something along those lines today. So I think that is, you know, having some knowledge base around, you know, those kinds of things I think is critically important. You know, when we were first growing up, at least having Allen and I were growing up in this business. I mean, all you had to know is your catalog. Now you have to have skillset much wider than that and understand how what you’re trying to promote and what you’re doing affects the greater whole of the machine. having a really well-rounded focus between mechanical, electrical, and even, you know, process, I think is, is really, is going to be really important for people to be able to impact the entire machine and the entire focus of what customers are trying to do moving forward. I think it’s, there’s going be a need for people to dive in deep on certain subjects, but I think the really successful people in fluid power will have skills that branch out over the entirety of kind of the technology.
- Meghann Cook: leads into my question a little bit too, Bruce. What do you see as the biggest challenge in the fluid power industry right now?
- Bruce Mckay: You know, it’s interesting. I think we have a lot, obviously there’s a lot of, we’ll call them experienced people in our industry. And I think, you know, there’s a lot of knowledge base that’s going to be exiting the industry over the next several years. I think it’s been interesting because there’s a lot of really solid young people that we’re bringing in right now. We’ve hired just a ton of new people over the last five years, it’s crazy for me when I look out at the number of people we’ve hired. And I’m really excited because they are very curious and they’re very capable. They’ve obviously, it’s hard to replace that knowledge base and that experience. So that’s gonna be the biggest challenge, I think, is just that knowledge transfer. I think AI is a big possibility to help with some of that. And I think the other big challenge is just the way customers want to consume knowledge and consume their products that they’re using and staying current with how the customers are changing. That’ll be the other really big challenge, I think.
- Meghann Cook: Yeah, and you you’re talking about the past five years and, you know, hiring new folks. This is, you know, another question related to that. You know, what do you see as your biggest hiring challenge at this point? You know, is it qualified candidates? Is it retention, onboarding, the time it takes to get them hired? What do you see today that might be different from even 10 years ago?
- Bruce Mckay: Yes. I would just say yes to all those questions, but you know, I definitely think onboarding is really a key for us. And it’s something we’re spending a lot of time working on. We can always get better at it, but you know, I think the biggest challenge we’ve seen, we don’t typically miss on the technical side with most of our hires where we end up missing is on the motivational piece and the maturity piece. I think there’s just a difference in some of the people today that we hire that are have, I don’t want to call it entitled, but just a different sense of what their responsibilities are. I can tell you, nobody held me more accountable than myself when I was first getting in this business. And I think sometimes the day we run into people that, they are waiting for us to hold them accountable. And I think that’s probably a real challenge for us is trying to understand that when we’re hiring them. We do hire really great people that, you know, they’re go getters and they get it right out of the box. you know, we always talk about the reins and the spurs and I never have to talk about the spurs with these people. And those are the ones we really want to hire. I don’t mind using the reins. I don’t want to have to the spurs. just making sure that we’re getting people that are going to really have that internal drive to succeed. I think it’s a little harder today than it’s been. think just the way people grew up and the expectations were just different years ago than they are today. So you just got to make sure you’re picking the right ones out of the gate because they are there for sure. Like I said, we’ve hired a lot of really good ones we’re excited about. that’s a huge challenge for us when we’re interviewing.
- Allen Burdette: I’ve got an off the books question, I guess. You know, there’s a lot of consolidation going on in the industry right now has been for quite some time. And you the company you’re currently with is big part of that. What’s your feelings about consolidation as far as you think it’s good for the industry? And if so, why?
- Bruce Mckay: You know, I think, I do think it’s good. I mean, I can tell you the partners that, you know, we’ve joined forces with, I mean, just what great companies and we will not join forces with a company that doesn’t share our culture and values. And so I think that’s one of the reasons it’s been very successful for us. You know, I have seen, you know, where it hasn’t worked well. And I think typically where it doesn’t work well or where those two things don’t align. So, you know, we did before we even start getting into the numbers, we start looking at the values and, and the culture just for alignment before we look at, do we even start looking at numbers or any of those kinds of things? that that’s where I think it’s good. And we also maintain, you know, the local presence, the local name, the local, you know, of all the local cultural things. I was just up at Price Engineering the other day and we were doing an NFPA event with 180 people for one of the local high schools. it was, the families were involved and there was, we had all these gift bags and it was really just a neat event. And it’s known as a Price Engineering thing, not a Sunsource thing. It’s a local thing that they’ve been doing for years and they’ve really made a name for it and you know we you know a lot of our charities and all those kinds of things so I do think it gives us you know we try to maintain that local piece of it but also you know just being able to to have the resources that we have corporately I think it enables some of these smaller companies to be able to do things they would otherwise couldn’t do so that part of it I do think it’s really good I will say you know obviously these companies got to where they were by you know not being part of a bigger company so there must be something to that as well. But as you look at the resources and you know, just everything involved with you the legal side the financial side all those kinds of things I do think it lends itself pretty well to you know, 20 forces That’s how Sunsource started as a whole was you know, we had seven companies around the country that were all independent that got together all at one time and you know, I think we’re now up to 40 or 50 of those companies that are off joint forces. But again, we try to maintain the localization that made them special, but also, you know, try to, you know, use the joint benefit of us all being together to make things, you know, to give us that power that we need. If that makes sense.
- Allen Burdette: Right, yeah. It does.
- Meghann Cook: Bruce Hay, we really appreciate your time. We know how busy you are. lot going on there, so we appreciate you taking the time out and visiting with us today.
- Bruce Mckay: No, we appreciate it too. Thanks for all you do. You’re a big part of our business and a big part of our success. So we really appreciate everything both of you do for us. So let us know if we can ever help you.
- Allen Burdette: Thanks Bruce.
- Meghann Cook: Thank you, Bruce. Much appreciated.
- Bruce Mckay: Thank you. All right, thanks