The Modern Industrialist Xchange (MIX) Podcast is for industrial leaders navigating the shift toward smarter, more connected operations. Host Jason Hehman sits down each month with the people actually doing the work, sharing what is working, what is not, and where the industry is headed.
33. Closing rail's visibility gap: how telematics is changing railcar operations
You can track a pizza to your door in real time. Most companies can't tell you where their own million dollar railcar is sitting, even in their own yard.
Jared DeVries spent twelve years at CP Rail, now CPKC, working in marketing, pricing, and sales, and time on the tracks as a qualified conductor. He now runs JW Rail Solutions, helping shippers get more out of an industry that's still catching up on aggregating its own data.
In this episode, Jared breaks down who actually owns the railcars moving across North America, why rail has been slower to modernize than other industrial categories, and where telematics fits as the foundation for the visibility everyone in the industry is asking for.
Resources:
Connect with Jason Hehman on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhehman/
Connect with Jared DeVries on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-devries-53b92420/
Learn more about the Modern Industrialist Xchange podcast at https://txidigital.com/mix-podcast
29 Jul 2026
32. Build builders, not projects: what Helpful Engineering learned about innovation and open source
Helpful Engineering started with 19 strangers on a Reddit thread trying to solve a shortage of face masks and ventilators. Six years later, the nonprofit has mobilized more than 20,000 volunteer engineers, scientists, and makers around open source hardware.
Amish Chadha, the organization’s Chief Risk Officer, joins Jason Hehman to talk about what happened next: a self described funnel of failure, a shipment of oxygen concentrators that exposed a hard lesson about supply chain visibility, and why the real goal was never building products. It was building builders, a distinction Amish comes back to near the end of the conversation and the one this episode is named for.
If you lead operations, manage supply chain risk, or want a different way to think about how organizations actually get better at solving hard problems, this one delivers.
Resources:
- Connect with Jason Hehman on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhehman/
- Connect with Amish Chadha on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/amishchadha/
- Learn more about the Modern Industrialist Xchange podcast at https://txidigital.com/mix-podcast
26 May 2026
31. Go see, ask why: modernizing railcar maintenance without losing the human side
What does it actually take to run continuous improvement across a fleet of 115,000 rail cars?
James Chapman spent nearly a decade at GATX, one of North America's largest railcar leasing companies, moving from Director of Continuous Improvement all the way to leading all of the company's owned North American operations. His approach was simple in concept and hard in practice: get on the floor, ask questions you don't know the answers to, and build a culture that wants to solve problems rather than explain them away.
In this conversation, Jason Hehman and James get into what daily management actually looks like at scale, the surprising parallels between rail car maintenance and traditional manufacturing, how GATX thought about building custom software versus buying off the shelf, and what happened when the TXI team showed up at one of their maintenance facilities and started asking why.
If you lead operations, manage a distributed team, or are trying to figure out how to move from isolated fixes to a real platform approach, this one will give you something to think about.
Resources:
Connect with Jason Hehman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonhehman/
Connect with James Chapman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/james-l-chapman/
Learn more about TXI at https://txidigital.com/
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
2 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 17 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
9
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
60
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