System Integrator of the Year: Maverick Technologies

Ranked 4th in CFE Media’s SI Giants rankings, Maverick Technologies has been named System Integrator of the Year in the Large SI category for the second time in four years. Maverick has more than $72 million in revenues in the 2014 SI Giants ranking, making it one of the world’s largest system integration companies. Maverick president and CEO Paul Galeski talked with CFE Media about how his company hopes to continue to ride the growth wave of U.S. and global manufacturing:

CFE: What makes for a successful collaboration between an integrator and a customer? How do you get the most out of your customers, and how can they get the most out of you?

Galeski: A successful partnership between an integrator and customer depends on establishing common goals with an agreed upon vision of success along with a high level of mutual trust across both organizations. Maverick brings together our customers’ cross functional groups such as management, operations, maintenance, purchasing and engineering to ensure that we can address each group’s needs and deliver value to each.

To get the most out of each other’s expertise, Maverick brings together our deep expertise in automation and controls and our customers’ intimate knowledge of their process.

CFE: How do you stay ahead of emerging technology in the industry, and how do you bring that technology to your customers?

Galeski: Maverick heavily promotes thought leadership throughout the organization and externally through blogs, quarterly newsletters, articles for trade publications, and technical sessions. These are not sales pitches, but insights into the world of process automation and some of the methodologies that Maverick employs to make U.S. manufacturing better. Like-minded engineers recognize that we are looking to the future and not satisfied with the mindset of "we’ve always done it that way".

A mix of diverse projects, technologies, industries, challenges and experiences keep our people and processes on the leading edge. In addition, we focus on continuing education through Maverick University as well as outside training opportunities for our teams. We bring technology to our customers with a focus on leveraging it to solve specific problems.

If our customers want help selecting tools or can make efficiency or capacity gains by utilizing technology they may not be aware of, we’ll make recommendations based on our experience and expertise — but we won’t push technology for the sake of technology.

CFE: What changes do your customers need to prepare for in the next five years, both in terms of manufacturing as a whole and in the way they use technology?

Galeski: U.S. manufacturing growth will continue and most likely accelerate. This will be driven by the comparatively low cost and stable supply of energy. This should lead to an increase of greenfield projects along with a continued push to upgrade legacy and obsolete control and automation systems. This growth comes at a time when a large portion of the experienced workforce is reaching retirement age, and we expect this to drive a shift to newer technologies such as mobility, internet-enabled infrastructure and big data. As these technologies become more widely used, manufacturers will have to also take a hard look at cybersecurity and protection of intellectual property.

CFE: One continuing issue we hear throughout industrial automation is the need for more skilled workers. How do you approach recruitment and training for your organization?

Galeski: At Maverick we invest in new engineers. We use everyday projects as opportunities to nurture our future leaders. Control system migrations shouldn’t just be about process automation; they should also focus on the development of our future engineers. A major migration project offers what is arguably the best opportunity to train the next generation of automation engineers and plant operators in a way that can yield benefits for many years to come.

As with any professional services business, the product that we sell is the collective skill set of our people. Accordingly, we depend upon our world-class people to deliver on our promise of providing increased profitability and operational efficiency to our customers. Engaging the best people is critical to our customers and our success. Maverick’s Workforce Development Team and our Technology Leaders focus their efforts on advancing our workforce through the development of training programs, tools and procedures. Maverick’s strategic workforce development goals include recruiting, hiring, developing and retaining a diverse workforce; creating a responsive, high-performance culture; and promoting knowledge-sharing, continuous learning and a climate of open communications.

By its own reckoning, Maverick Technologies is the largest independent system integrator in North America. The company provides industrial automation and strategic manufacturing services globally to clients in a variety of industries including oil and gas, chemicals and petrochemicals, food and beverage, high-tech manufacturing, life sciences, publishing, pulp and paper, and power and utilities."

Maverick is clearly focused on being the big player in the industrial automation space," noted judge Don Roberts. "They have built the company in such a way that it keeps the employees efficiently aligned with serving the global customer."

Judge Vance VanDoren was also impressed by the extent of MAVERICK’s global reach. "While other integrators have overseas operations, Maverick has a truly international presence. They’ve ventured across the globe and succeeded wherever they’ve done business."

Maverick Technologies by the numbers:

• 500+ employees
• 19 global locations
• 1,000 resources, vendors and alliance partners
• 13,000 years of combined experience
• 12,000 projects completed

Client evaluation:

"I ran the plant through the weekend on graveyards and it ran better than I’ve ever seen it run before. Every small adjustment I would make, it responded really well. It will surely make our life easier once we all learn the ins and outs of the new system better. Please let all your team know how much we appreciate all the hard work, dedication and help they gave us during this new process. You guys need to pat yourself on the back."

ONLINE extra

View the System Integrator Hall of Fame to learn about past winners.

Also view the Global System Integrator Database to learn more about the winners and other system integrator companies.

See what the other System Integrator of the Year winners had to say about their industry and manufacturing as a whole below.

Click here to watch a video interview conducted by CFE Media with Galeski.

Learn more about Maverick Technologies in the Global System Integrator Database.

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