Swagelok Gas Distribution Services

One of the challenges we find a lot of customers facing is that they are not always able to assign resources to their gas distribution system. For example, one customer has a system of over 250 gas lines but a team of only two people to look after it.

The other challenge we found is that our customers wouldn’t always get a solution that meets all of their requirements. And that’s where our highly trained professionals, who are trained by Swagelok, can go in, look at those challenges, and offer solutions that can solve some of their current issues.

The main reason to get a Swagelok field engineer to come and evaluate your system is that we look at it from an overall point of view, but also in detail. So, we’ll review things like system functionality, the quality of the components, and all of those things that make up the system.

All of our evaluations are really centered on a few different things. One is, let’s see what you have and how it performs. Very often, because these systems evolve over time, you can’t rely on the drawing of how they were built, if those drawings even exist anymore.

So, one of our first goals is to document what systems you have, what gases they are carrying, and how they are performing. Next, we start looking with a critical eye on best practices. Are there industry or experiential best practices that our field engineers have understood and picked up through their experience that could be used on that current system? We try to highlight those in regard to safety, efficiency, leakage, or design, and then tie that together with system recommendations and an implementation plan going forward.

We’re very familiar with a lot of the applications in the industry. We have a very big wealth of knowledge behind us—not just the account manager or us as the advisors, but also the field engineers and the factory behind us. By allowing us to be involved in that, we can make sure that the products they specify for their systems are designed to work for their system.

We also try to utilize our different means of digital connection as much as we can. Things like the 3D PDF output of a gas distribution panel that can be rotated, zoomed in, and turned upside down to see exactly how it would fit into a customer’s system wouldn’t have always been possible until the panel was built and brought on-site.

By working together with us, we can ensure that every product that goes into the system is the best and most efficient option for them. Now, bringing that whole team on-site isn’t always feasible or cost-effective, so being able to interact with them virtually, while still tapping into the expertise of the broader team, is really valuable for our customers.

One neat capability that we have is a camera system that allows us either to take it on-site ourselves or ship it to one of our customers and have them wear it. They can wear it right into the plant, and we can go into a virtual meeting with them. It goes on, and you can wear it with a hard hat and be totally safe. It has an eyepiece that allows me to see your screen so we can have a conversation. Then, it has a camera that allows you to see what I’m seeing. So, it allows us to have a virtual meeting where we can walk around, be safe, be in the plant, and do an advisory service.

We know those components. We’ve lived those components for more than 70 years, and our field engineers have extensive experience with these types of gas-handling systems at many different sites all over the globe.

So, being able to combine our component knowledge with the experience of our field engineers gives our customers the confidence that they are going to be using the most efficient and safest gas distribution systems for their business.