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Green
Oak man has a bright idea
Bryan
Zaplitny hopes MTI will be a $25 million operation within 3 years
Unless
the room stays dark when they flip the switch in the morning, most people never
give lighting a second thought.
By
giving it a first, second and third thought, Green Oak Township businessman
Bryan Zaplitny is looking to build MTI Energy Management/Lighting Specialists
into a $25 million-a-year concern within three years.
MTI
began in Dearborn 12 years ago providing primarily outdoor lighting systems, and
it has grown into a company that "provides turnkey solutions to lighting
needs," said Zaplitny. The company has also moved three times, the latest
into a 12,200-square-foot building in an industrial park south of Silver Lake
Road.
"We
needed to move to expand in order to keep up with current customers' demands and
new customers in the future," said Zaplitny "Owning a larger facility
will ensure that we are ready for the future."
Zaplitny
said he was drawn to Green Oak Township by the tremendous growth in eastern
Livingston County and western Oakland County as well as its central location to
MTI's core service area, which includes northern Ohio and Indiana as well as
southern Michigan.
While
the company's new home has nearly double the warehouse space of its previous
location just an eighth of a mile away on Kensington Court, it has less than
half the office space. "We're real cozy right now," observed Dan Van
Tiem, company president.
Zaplitny
said MTI will be breaking ground on an 8,000-square-foot, two-story addition to
the building in August, which will give the company the office space it needs as
well as provide space for its new electrical useage monitoring equipment.
That
equipment will play an important role in rolling out the company's newest
program, RAMP (Retrofit And Maintenance Program). According to Zaplitny, nobody
in his industry is offering anything quite like it.
With
RAMP, MTI technicians will survey a facility's lighting fixtures, examine its
monthly lighting bill for the past two years and then offer a plan to replace
the facility's lighting system and substantially cut its lighting bill with no
capital outlay.
According
to Zaplitny, most companies' strategy for energy conservation revolves around
turning off lights and turning down thermostats. That, he said, is only a
partially effective strategy.
According
to Zaplitny, rising utility costs have pushed lighting from the fifth or sixth
position on building maintenance costs to third. On top of that, he said he
expects to see electric costs jump 30 to 40 percent this year.
Zaplitny
said lighting is something people tend to forget about once a building is
constructed, but advances in light fixture design are similar to the advances in
automobile engine technology.
He
noted that today's automakers are getting more horsepower and greater fuel
economy out of V6 engines than was produced by the monster V8s of the 1970s.
Similarly, lighting manufacturers are offering better quality light with today's
two-bulb, 58-watt fixtures than the four-bulb, 192-watt fixtures found in most
commercial settings.
"Savings
on utilities go right to the bottom line," said Zaplitny.
Improving
the quality of light in a building, he added, also saves money by improving
productivity. He noted that recent studies have shown that complaints about
eyestrain and late afternoon headaches have supplanted carpal tunnel syndrome as
the leading workplace gripe.
He
said that while old-style fluorescent lamps cycle 100 times a second, new
fixtures typically cycle once a second. He said that while most people aren't
aware of it, their eyes react to it, and it's a contributing factor in office
fatigue.
With
RAMP, said Zaplitny, MTI first retrofits a building with the state-of-the-art
lighting fixtures and then maintains them for the company. He noted that when
companies tighten belts, the maintenance budget belt is often one of the ones
pulled the hardest.
He
said the key to RAMP is that its costs come straight out of a company's existing
utility budget.
Zaplitny
predicted provable direct savings to businesses will help him recruit 2,000
facilities into the RAMP program over the next three years.
By
Phil Foley, IBJ
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