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PETROLEUM DIRECTORY: Customer service adds value to vast supply of electrical gear at North Coast Electric Company augments its procurement services with technical expertise, logistics support and supply chain automation
Alan Bailey PNA Contributing Writer
With electrical equipment and electronics at the heart of almost every building venture, an electrical distributor like the North Coast Electric Co. fulfills a critical role in any construction or maintenance project. North Coast Electric’s focus on customer service and business innovation has kept the company at the forefront of its industry.
Grounded in experience “We were founded in Seattle in 1913 and we’ve been doing business in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska since then,” said Shane Cunningham, Alaska general manager for North Coast Electric. The company, headquartered in Bellevue, Wash., operates 27 distribution sites in the Pacific Northwest.
The company opened its Anchorage office in 1996.
“North Coast has done business with Alaska customers for many, many years,” Cunningham said. “We just didn’t have an office, facility or an infrastructure (in state) — we derive roughly half of our business from oil, directly or indirectly, and the other half from (other) commercial activities in the state.”
The company has supplied electrical hardware, wiring and automation equipment for many major projects in Alaska, including the development of the Northstar, Alpine, Milne Point and Palm oilfields.
North Coast Electric is the Alaska distributor for major manufacturers of automation and instrumentation equipment, such as flow and level control instrumentation, motor controls and programmable logic controllers.
“Those are used for controlling equipment on the North Slope,” Cunningham said. “We have equipment at every oilfield on the North Slope, at every production facility.” Value-added business Rather than just selling products, however, North Coast Electric takes pride in adding value for its customers through such services as technical support.
“In Alaska, we’re the only electrical distributor that has a staff of trained automation people,” Cunningham said. “We have two local automation engineers, one that supports programmable logic controllers and the other that supports variable frequency drives.”
Sixteen automation specialists in the Lower 48 provide additional support.
And electrical work on the North Slope requires specialist expertise.
“There are requirements and characteristics related to the electrical codes that are unique to the North Slope that we’re aware of and involved with, as well as just equipment design requirements that are unique to the Arctic environment,” Cunningham said. The zone rating system North Coast Electric also has developed expertise in the new zone rating system for the safety classification of electrical equipment.
The class and division system widely used for rating equipment in North America uses much broader classifications than the zone ratings. Consequently, zone ratings enable much more precise safety specifications than the older system.
“Zone classification allows you to use maybe a less expensive item where formerly that class and division product might cost a lot more, maybe be over designed,” Cunningham said. The zone-rated product is often more cost-effective but equally safe.
“The Alpine field is the first North American field to use zone-rated equipment, and we participated significantly in that,” Cunningham said. “We not only provided a lot of zone-rated equipment, we provided a lot of the preliminary training for electrical people.” Training classes Beside doing zone rating training, North Coast Electric presents many other seminars and classes.
“We provide training that helps the customer become familiar with the technology and then we provide training that the customer pays for to become proficient in the use and programming of the equipment,” Cunningham said.
The company also arranges specialized seminars for electrical engineers and contractors. This May, for example, the company is presenting a seminar on the use of fiberglass conduit as a substitute for traditional metal conduit. Logistics services As another part of its value add for the customer, North Coast Electric manages the logistics of moving products from the vendor to the user. Alaska’s remote setting makes efficient logistics particularly critical.
“In Alaska the logistics is far more important than it is in the Lower 48,” Cunningham said. “In some cases we work with the vendors to ensure consistent shipping mediums and agreements and in other cases we’re completely responsible for the shipping.”
A project management group in the company’s Anchorage office ensures progress according to schedules agreed up front with customers.
“We notify the customer in advance if there’s any potential problems,” Cunningham said. “That’s something that not every distributor does.”
The company also maintains about $1.6 million in inventory in its Anchorage warehouse.
“We have an acre of storage in the back,” Cunningham said. “We’ve increased the size of our warehouse by a third since we first built it.”
The Anchorage facility includes a customer counter and a 24-hour access room for customer pickups. Electronic commerce North Coast Electric has broken new ground in the use of Internet technology to notch up the company’s customer services.
Beside ordering materials through a Web service center, customers can interchange information with North Coast Electric over the Internet.
“We really have the ability to do (electronic data interchange) in a number of different ways,” Cunningham said. “We have the ability to tie directly to a customer’s purchasing and accounting software — it all depends on our customers’ preferences and their willingness to integrate with our equipment.” Storeroom management In a further development of its electronic commerce initiatives, North Coast Electric provides management services for several customers’ storerooms. The Internet links the company’s store management software to the customer’s site.
“We automate the process, we provide the bar-code equipment and computer system and the personnel — and literally run their central store procurement for them,” Cunningham said. “So they don’t have to hire people and be responsible for the inventory and the labor.”
North Coast Electric also can automate a customer’s service vans by linking each van to a central computer system.
“We can turn each van into a rolling warehouse so the customer can actually track each service van’s performance,” Cunningham said. “It allows him or her to do much more tight control and analysis of where materials are being used.” Portable stores Recently, North Coast Electric has pioneered the use of portable stores. Each store consists of a 45-foot trailer containing electrical equipment and supplies.
“(Each store) is a bar-coded and computer automated inventory that we can take to the customer’s job site and then replenish daily,” Cunningham said. “We’re electronically linked over a phone line between that portable store and our computer system.”
The use of the portable store reduces the time and energy that the electrical contractor expends in rounding up the pieces and parts to keep a project going, Cunningham said.
All of these pioneering ways of doing business exemplify North Coast Electric’s determination to excel at customer service.
“We’re proud of what we do,” Cunningham said. “We are truly a full-service, value-add electrical distributor and we’re constantly looking for new ways in which we can help our customers — to lower their costs by taking over and running their processes for them, or simply making it easier to procure whatever they need.”
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