One year ago, Monument Chemical embarked on a major transformative shift into renewable fuels, leveraging decades of experience in specialty fuels from our Haltermann Solutions team. But as we took an exciting step forward into the new venture, we also took an intentional step back. Because we knew that the best way to elevate our service was to unify our approach — guided by our greatest strengths across every facility.

“While Haltermann Solutions has been an impactful part of our business since day one, we never truly integrated our structures and processes into a single operational unit,” Sarves Peri, Business Leader, Monument Renewables & Fuels, explained. “Rolling out our new business in renewable fuels helped highlight differences across our sites, so we knew it was the perfect time to combine our unique customer service teams into one cohesive department. That not only meant moving our HS customer service team to our Baytown Customer Service Center, but also diving deep into our current processes to design a whole new, centralized way of working.”

That deep dive kicked off with a high-level analysis from Kurt Griffith, Director of Operations, Jason McDuff, Customer Service Manager for Monument’s North American region, as well as several production planners across our Bayport, Houston, and Port Arthur sites. 

“Jason has truly taken our customer service team at our flagship sites into the 22nd Century with all new technology and processes,” Kurt explained. “So he was able to provide a holistic view into the best business practices we’ve implemented at each facility to provide complete transparency into what’s working and what could be better at others. From there, we went straight to the source, consulting Customer Service Reps (CSR) for their day-to-day perspective into each area of our processes to uncover what tasks were the most time-consuming and what opportunities should be the focus.” 

Bringing all of our CSRs together under one roof also gives everyone exposure to what each of the sites are doing, allowing our team members to work more synergistically and better understand our processes as a whole.

“In our existing set up, we didn’t have a lot of opportunities to cross train or grow within isolated departments, so we wanted to create more chances to be exposed to new functions and learn from them,” Jason shared. “Everyone is asking great questions and acknowledging the effort it takes to make these changes. At the same time, they’re able to learn from things that are done at other sites — from market knowledge to exports and systems, like the SAPs used at our Kentucky facility. There’s such an opportunity for lateral growth that comes with increased exposure to other sites.”

This knowledge sharing will not only support operation excellence across the business, but also naturally translate to major benefits for our customers. For those being served across multiple Monument sites, they’ll now have just 1-2 highly knowledgeable contacts that can respond to any site activity versus a different contact for each area. And with all of our reps being more informed as a whole, our customers have several layers of support for any given process.

“We are finally integrating the HS business into our suite of electronic tools provided by TenForce,” Blake Saffer, Global Quality Leader, shared. “These tools provide comprehensive digital solutions for quality, safety and compliance, ensuring consistent workflows, data management, and reporting. And from a quality perspective, HS brings expertise in ISO17025, having held a certification for many years. So it's truly a mutually beneficial synergy for both teams.”

With all of the CSRs successfully transitioned to the Baytown Rollingbrook site, June is dedicated to training and accounts assignments. By the start of Q3, everyone will have their designated responsibilities and customer contacts, and the new operations will be well underway.

But that’s not the only move happening. The Haltermann Solutions Lab is also taking over idle space within the Bayport site by the end of Q3 2024.

“Having the HS lab at Bayport will allow us to better leverage its existing Quality and R&D functions and create real synergy across multiple departments,” Jerry Traylor, Process Technology and Capital Engineering Manager, explained. “We’re taking advantage of underutilized spaces and expanding to accommodate new testing and processes, while better aligning all of our teams across the board. Every decision is part of a bigger, strategic investment in our own facilities and our employees for the future.”

“Increasing our onsite testing capabilities at the Bayport site opens up additional opportunities for our current and future customers,” Blake added. “While the HS lab has always been a resource for testing, we’ll now be able to provide real-time test results which are often required to maintain process control and product quality.”

Monument’s customer service is where we really shine against our competitors, and now, we’re finding ways to make it even better while entering new markets in our industry. “We’re investing a lot of resources into our people and processes because we know the ongoing impact it will have on our customers, employees, and business as a whole,” Umair Virani, Custom Manufacturing Director, Monument Renewables & Fuels, said. “These changes were much-needed, and the timing is just right to maximize all the advantages they will provide.”