Women in Industry: Jean Langevin

April 7, 2020

Jean Langevin
Maybury Material Handling
Parts Consignment Rep
YEARS ON JOB: 8 years

In my role as Parts Consignment Representative, I spend each day on the road delivering weekly consignment restocks to our customers and our technicians. I spend time with each customer to discuss how their equipment is running, if they are having any issues with it and to help them to order the correct parts needed to maintain it. I was also trained as a shop technician in my first year at the company, so, at times, I am able to help them with diagnosing and troubleshooting their equipment. When I’m unable to, I have the resources and coworkers available to me to get the answers needed to ensure that the customer is taken care of.

Communication

Strong communication is the most essential part of my day-to-day job. I keep in touch with my parts manager throughout the day to field customer questions and parts inquiries and to get answers to a wide variety of queries. This helps me to ensure that our customers are happy and satisfied to the best of my ability. I also keep in touch with our road service technicians when they are in need of parts on the fly to help get our customers equipment up and running in the timeliest fashion. But that’s just two small examples of how having strong communication helps me dayto-day. Everyone in our company, in every department, is always accessible to field specific questions that I may have, from sales, to safety, to billing, etc. Communication is key in any company for success, and Maybury definitely has just that. 

Advice to Women

 I was always taught that if you work hard enough, you can accomplish anything, and I have done just that. My advice to women that are interested in a material handling career is this… you CAN do it. No, it isn’t easy to get past some of the stereotypes that have been placed on women in a laborious environment, and yes I have had to prove it to myself that I could do it, but never give up.  Work hard, ask questions, and never be afraid to ask for help. Working together is the key to success. Being a woman in the material handling industry is and has been the most rewarding career path that I could have ever chosen for myself. I have gained so much knowledge, excelled in my career goals, and have made strong relationships with our customers and fellow employees over the past 8 years. I will always be grateful to Maybury Material Handling for giving me the opportunity to be part of such an amazing team.

Traits

Knowledge is the strongest and most important tool that I have that I could not be able to do without. Over the past 8 years with Maybury I have learned about the equipment through training, but most importantly through talking with our service and shop technicians and our parts department. The technicians are always willing to share their knowledge and experience to help me get to the bottom of a customer’s equipment issues and to help me to help them get their trucks back up and running in a timely fashion. And our parts department will always help with verifying that the correct parts are getting ordered using the resources available to them. As far as skills that I couldn’t do my job with out, I would have to say that being empathetic, understanding and listening to the customers’ needs are the strongest skills needed in this position.