Brent Greenwood ensures that the energy sector has the right tools at the right time

Brent Greenwood deals with tough customers as supply chain management vice-president of the oil and gas industry’s general store. The options for CE Franklin Ltd.’s 500-employee network of 49 outlets do not include lineups for hit-or-miss service by minimally trained clerks unfamiliar with the inventory.

Although the firm is often given shorthand descriptions as a counterpart to big-box retailers, Greenwood is hard pressed to think of any practical comparisons between CE Franklin’s role and consumer mass marketing. The stock-in-trade at any given time is more than 25,000 varieties of merchandise ranging from tiny nuts and bolts to mammoth valves and motors. More than 3,000 regular customers expect the industrial store to understand every particle of their gear, make it available on demand, and keep prices reasonable.

During the 1990s dot-com bubble, billed by software promoters as the onset of “the e-dustrial revolution,” there were popular theories that a brave new world of virtual warehouses would sweep away oilfield establishments. The prophecies turned out to be wrong.

“A decade ago, it was thought that the Internet and e-commerce would bypass distributors,” Greenwood recalls. “In fact, the role of the distributor has been enhanced and expanded over the last 10 years, not only in providing products, but also in providing information.”

Computers play a big role in obtaining, maintaining and delivering inventories and sales. But the industrial general store has evolved into the master of information technology rather than its servant.
“Our customers are there to produce oil and gas rather than buy and hold materials. The distributor generally has better information tools for this aspect of industry. They often look to us for reports on what they consume,” Greenwood says.

Energy companies and oilfield contractors, far from regarding their equipment stores as mere go-betweens for manufacturers, hold distributors responsible for the merchandise. Exploration and production operations are like the proverbial battles of history that were lost for want of messengers’ horses. Breakdowns and missing pieces, involving relatively cheap materials, can grind equipment and crews to a halt, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars for every hour that they sit idle, waiting for machinery or supplies.

Relationships and alliances, created to anticipate oil companies’ needs and ensure efficient responses, continue to be a big part of the supply chain management that has made Franklin an industry mainstay since the 1930s. The firm’s 1993 conversion into a publicly traded corporation and a 1999 share transaction added the CE to the name and a North American dimension to the operation. Houston-based Smith International Inc. emerged as a 54 per cent shareholder, establishing a connection with wholly owned American distributor Wilson International Inc.

The corporate family bond has enabled Greenwood to improve responses to the oil companies’ habit of making their equipment distributor accountable for its merchandise. He readily accepts the customers’ attitude. “They need to know they’re going to get a product that works and that we stand behind it,” Greenwood says. “We’re putting our name on what we provide. Our name is not on the product. But our company is the perceived supplier, whether it’s made in India or Edmonton.” Franklin and Wilson team up on checking out industrial products before adding them to their merchandise catalogues. The effort includes probationary trials of manufacturers’ abilities to deliver the right stuff reliably on schedule. The Canadian distributor’s service is starting to include equipment assembly, initially with installations of controls on valves.

Greenwood has been part of CE Franklin’s evolution since 1980, when he came out of an unexpected quarter to make his start at a Medicine Hat store. He freely admits he has encountered little call for the in-depth knowledge of French intellectual and political development that he absorbed earning his MA in history from the University of Saskatchewan. He turned to industry when an academic career turned out not to be his ticket out of Adanac, a village that sported the name of Canada spelled backwards. His family ran a small hardware and farm supply store there for more than 30 years, until Adanac emptied out into a ghost town.

Even though Greenwood eventually joined the management mainstream by also picking up an MBA from the University of Calgary, he is a stalwart advocate of the humanities as sound grounding for a career in the industrial officer class. “It equips a person with the ability to analyze a lot of information, to think and to present information in writing and at meetings. I’m a strong believer that there is a place in the world for liberal arts education.”

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