Jim Zelazny - IMS

Jim Zelazny’s work always starts with diagnosis: What exactly does a client need and how can IMS help in the most efficient and effective way possible? The fun is in figuring out the best answers to that sometimes complicated question. Often the answer involves not just what a client needs, but what equipment they don’t need to replace because it’s supportable.

After leaving college with his bachelors in Electrical Engineering and Control Systems, Jim saw companies that approached things differently. They sold one type of system and focused on convincing clients to buy it. “We started this company 25 years ago,” Jim says, “because we didn’t want anybody to tell us how to do our work.” A quarter-century later, he’s as happy as ever to have embraced that entrepreneurial spirit.

When asked about the company’s ongoing success, Jim points to this: Customers know that IMS is determined to meet their needs in the most thorough, practical and cost-effective way. “When our big competitors come into a mill, they’re selling the whole rolling mill, including all the mechanical stuff. It’s in their best interest to sell things,” he explains. “We come in completely unbiased. We’re process experts.”

His nearly 30 years of experience with controls engineering and project management has been spent mostly in the metals industry: Flat rolling, shape rolling, process lines, casters, coke making, welders, furnaces, and water treatment. He has extensive background working with drives, motion control, various PLC and HMI platforms. But whatever the details of a particular project, the fun is in building a thriving culture of excellence at IMS and learning to truly understand how all kinds of processes work. “We’re driven by quality and that’s our passion. We want to do the right thing for the customer,” Jim says, so that when a job is done, “we feel like it’s the best control system that we can put in that fits their needs specifically.”