2B Tech Case Study: How ISM’s Personal Touch Helps A Mission Driven Customer Better Serve Their Own

2B Tech estimates they save $35,000 and 250+ man-hours each year, freeing them up for other key tasks. They credit ISM’s value-added assembly services, short lead times for last minute part needs, and overall personal touch.

ISM’s Carper Davis is anything but transactional in his interactions with 2B Tech, arriving at their office on a Thursday morning to hand deliver their latest set of assemblies and check in on their operation. His conversation with 2B Tech’s Logan Miskowiec quickly evolved from the usual greetings to a discussion of their upcoming needs and current bottlenecks. Davis relayed questions from the ISM warehouse and productions teams and collected info and inquiries to bring back to them. He also proactively identified additional ways ISM might be able to help as 2B Tech expands their sub-assembly needs.

"When you get them, we’ll be ready," Davis said of the specs for these future assemblies.

"Yep," Miskowiec replied, "That’s what I love about you."

This case study is not about those new sub-assemblies, which are still in the offing, but about the long-standing relationship between 2B Tech and ISM typified by that exchange. It’s also about the incredible and important work 2B Tech does with ISM parts and assemblies in hand.

ISM Filter Assembly — The assemblies in question

Measuring What Matters: The 2B Tech Mission

2B Tech’s mission is to “Measure What Matters”, which, as Miskowiec states, "reflects the growing need globally to more accurately compile and review air pollutant data so that communities can react and respond accordingly to both acute and long-term trends."

In other words, knowing that certain air pollutants are harmful is just one step in a larger battle. To properly mitigate the harm caused by these gases, communities need to know more precisely what they are up against.

2B Tech serves this mission by developing instruments for measuring these air pollutants. Some of their instruments are specially designed for single specific gases, like Ozone or NOx (nitrogen oxides). Other, larger instruments measure a range of gases, including CO2, PM, Methane, and VOCs (volatile organic compounds), to give customers more control and allow them to measure what matters most to them.

"Depending on the site location", Miskowiec says of their devices,
"we offer solar ready [devices] and weather monitoring, so customers can truly measure what matters where it matters, whether it’s for compliance, research, or community monitoring."

When Measuring Matters: 2B Tech Customers

What sort of customers turn to 2B Tech monitoring devices and why? As a Colorado-based organization, 2B Tech proudly serves Denver area hospitals, providing them with tools to track air pollution on a daily basis to aid in adequate response to pollution rates. Similarly, researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have turned to 2B Tech technology in their investigation of Colorado’s ground-level ozone challenges.

2B Tech also serves organizations nationwide and worldwide, including California fire departments, who use their tools in studying what their firefighters go through when combating forest fires, and Beijing researchers, who sought to study the root cause of a days-long wintertime haze in their city.

“More advanced monitoring of these gas levels themselves leads to more nuanced understandings of how they affect health, environment, and more.”
Miskowiec says of their monitoring instruments. "There are a lot of organizations out there doing some amazing research and mitigation efforts, and we give them tools to increase their understanding and better calibrate those efforts."

2B Tech and ISM: A Partner in a Pinch

2B Tech and ISM have been working together long enough that Miskowiec is not 100% positive about how it all started, suffice it to say that sometime around the late 2000s, they needed parts in a pinch, and ISM came through.

The story ostensibly goes that Miskowiec’s predecessor needed 500 needle valves that the OEM would not be able to supply in time. They were referred to ISM for a quick turnaround. ISM’s Davis also took this opportunity to research their devices and suggest other parts they might get through ISM. From there, ISM became their go-to supplier for tight turnarounds and unexpected high-volume orders.

"Our demand can vary from month to month, which can create some supply challenges that companies with steady demand don’t usually have to work around", Miskowiec says of their last-minute needs.

"It can be a frustrating experience for both 2B Tech and our customers when we get an unexpected larger order and have to increase lead times while we wait on a component that we have out on blanket order but can’t be pushed up for delivery in sufficient time."

It's at times like this that they’ll specifically lean on ISM to bridge the supply-chain gap, so they and their customers can continue to do the important work they do.

"ISM is able to get these [parts] to us quickly in these cases", says Miskowiec, "and prevent delays in customer delivery."

2B Tech and ISM: Evolving Solutions with Major Benefits

What started as quick turnarounds for parts evolved into custom assemblies for various component needs. In addition to ordering parts directly from ISM, 2B Tech sends key components for inclusion in their assemblies by ISM’s production team. It was one such assembly that was the subject of Davis’s visit referenced at the start of this article.

"One of the biggest outcomes of outsourcing scrubbers was us being able to free up our shipping assistant role substantially."

Miskowiec notes that ISM’s assembly services have had a notable impact on their workload and processes. "This role has been redefined internally to remove building spare parts and has been able to focus on other value-added tasks."

He goes on to state that outsourcing the internal and external scrubbers is saving them about 125 hours annually, and he predicts that the newer assembly would save them an additional 157 hours annually. This, plus other factors, saves 2B Tech an estimated $35,000 each year.

Not Just a Drop in the Bucket

ISM takes pride in the personal touch we bring to our customer interactions, preferring to think of ourselves as partners first and suppliers second. Davis’s visit to 2B Tech and effort to understand and better serve their needs is demonstrative of this. And the effort has not gone unnoticed.

"Working with your staff is always a pleasant experience. We get prompt responses for ordering requests, thorough reviews when outsourcing plumbing [flow control] assemblies, and prompt reaction to any issues that come up", says Miskowiec, adding that as a smaller company, they sometimes feel overlooked by vendors because they aren’t spending as much.

"But with ISM, we get superior customer service and feel seen/heard in every interaction."

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