Chet Reshamwala likes to roll up his sleeves. The industry leader and CEO harks back to his time in the automotive industry designing sensors (for oil pressure, fuel pressure and airbag safety) and his joy in doing over 1,200 simulated crash tests.
Now in the industrial IoT and tank monitoring industry, Reshamwala’s drive to help customers improve operations and reduce their carbon footprint means understanding where they’re coming from.
“It’s difficult to understand the customer’s pain points unless you’ve actually been in a truck with a driver, experienced the routes that they’re taking, and been in the back office with the schedulers. ... Because ultimately what we’re trying to do is improve how people do their jobs,” he says.
Reshamwala’s peers describe his innovative influence as both subtle and evident. According to one of his colleagues, “Chet’s leadership and focus on industry-advancing innovations has helped participants across our industry enjoy a better work-life balance, more satisfying and productive work, and the inherent success that has ensued.”
As a leader in the technology sector, Reshamwala knows his job is never done and appreciates the pressure to continue producing new innovations in order to achieve his goals for the propane industry.
“Sometimes the classical way in which things have been done for the last 20 years isn’t the way they will be done for the next 20. So, I would say we’re not done, and there’s still a lot more operational efficiency to be driven in our industry. And there’s still quite a bit of waste that we can take out of our industry, including … helping to decarbonize our industry.”
For Reshamwala, accomplishing what he set out to do with Anova has been about being a problem solver, not a technology pusher. The problems he and his team have strived to address sometimes changed every year, requiring a continual push to provide solutions and innovations that meet a need as it appears.
“Many in our industry envision a future where there will never be another energy run out, that every route that our customers take will be the most efficient route. … [We want them to] always count on having propane available anytime and anywhere,” he says. “The industry may never achieve that vision 100%, but we are always going to drive toward getting to that north star as quickly and as successfully as possible.”
In Reshamwala’s view, at the end of the day, everyone is trying to do good. And that’s the stance he takes in his work.
“My goal is to leave the industry in a better place than where I started. And that’s always been the objective.”
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