InTech Magazine: People are the Right Stuff

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This month the fine folks at InTech Magazine were kind enough to ask me to write an editorial on the automation market.  My guess is they really wanted someone who was “long in the tooth” to comment on the cavalcade of changes in product technology – "a back in my day the PLCs ran on kerosene" sort of piece.  

Being a distribution guy, I penned “Selecting an Automation Distributor?  It’s about finding the right stuff”.  In the automation world, over 89% of the customers buy from distributors.  Yet many
are tossing dimes down the drain because they aren’t tapping into the right distributor services. 
Catch us on Lulu.com

In the article I charged customers with asking their distributors these questions:
·         What can your organization do to improve the uptime of my facility?
·         Do you have a plan to help us drive down our cost of doing business?
·         Do you offer one-on-one training for our engineers, technicians, and electricians?
·         How will my support calls be handled? What are the hours of operation?

I went on to say…
The “distribution” of product has not been prominently mentioned anywhere. In today’s world, we have plenty of really good products, quality is a given, and logistics channels move them from one corner of the continent to another in hours. Today, people are the right stuff. If distributors are not actively involved in enabling your people, they are not doing their job.


The whole article is posted here:

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