60 seconds with Greg Conner, Bastian Solutions

Greg Conner; Bastian Solutions
Title: Regional director
Location: Indianapolis
Experience: Joined Bastian Solutions 11 years ago, after college graduation. Since then, he has worked in engineering, sales and client relationship management.
Duties: As a regional director, his duties are to grow Bastian Solutions’ footprint in the Midwest. In addition, he is responsible for several national accounts.

Modern: Last month, we featured MHI’s Young Professional Network (YPN) in this column. You were the winner of the 2015 Outstanding Young Professional Award. Let’s start by talking about your age, how long you’ve been in the industry and your role at Bastian Solutions.
Conner: I’m 33 years old, so I am a young professional. I joined Bastian right out of college in 2005, and I’ve been with them ever since. When I hired on, there really wasn’t a sales territory available, so I spent about four months as a project engineer and then was promoted into a territory sales role as a field application engineer. In 2009, I was promoted into more of a managerial role. Today, I manage 21 direct reports spread over four business units, including three regional offices and our eCommerce sales.

Modern: How and why did you get involved in YPN? 
Conner: It was an accident, to be honest. I learned about it through LinkedIn. Looking back, I was probably doing some networking and came across the organization. I remember that it interested me because when I started out new in the industry, there were so many things that I didn’t know. The organization was an opportunity to connect with other people who were very much in my shoes. Some of the people I’ve communicated with are my competitors, some are my suppliers and some are my customers. To me, it’s a great organization for that networking.

Modern: One of the goals of the organization is to bring materials handling to the attention of the next generation of industry professionals. How did you learn about the industry and what attracted you to it? 
Conner: It was a complete coincidence, and I think that is one of the biggest challenges we have when it comes to getting new folks involved in our industry. There really isn’t an awareness. For instance, you really don’t get much exposure to materials handling in college unless you happen to take the right class or get an internship. My introduction was through the job interview process. I went to college in Indiana at Purdue, and when I was looking for a job, I found this company that was doing things with automation and robots. I’m not sure I knew that they were doing it in warehouses, but what they were doing sounded cool, so I interviewed with them. And when I learned more at the job interview, it was cool. But back then, in 2005, if you went to a company’s Website, you didn’t see videos and case studies. That’s the void that YPN can fill. It provides a lot of information about the industry to young professionals who might not know about the industry.

Modern: Why do you think that’s important?
Conner: If you think about it, one of the reasons so many companies are using the same tools and similar designs in their DCs could be because the same people have been designing systems for 30 years. I think we need new, young engineers who might think about the industry in a different way.

Modern: You’re talking to a friend looking for a job, or perhaps meeting with students at student day: What would you tell them is the best thing about working in the materials handling industry? 
Conner: Honestly, what attracts me to industry today is that we solve problems that impact real people. We have the ability to make people’s lives better, not only by reducing costs in the supply chain but to make really difficult jobs easier and safer to perform. I do find a cool factor about the job: When you dive into the details of the things we can do with automation, I geek out on it a little bit.