Happy Independence Day, for those of you in the US, anyway. Hope the rest of you have your own Independence Days. Ironically, I'm going to finally get around to talking about a Japanese company.
Thursday I attended my 7th Omron Electronics Editors Day where they entice a large group of trade editors to migrate to Schaumberg, IL for a couple of days to see what's up with the company. This year they pulled out all the stops and had pundit and Automation World columnist Jim Pinto deliver a luncheon keynote.
Jim and I bat e-mails back and forth often and I've heard him speak at least twice this year, so I'd heard most of his speech before. I haven't the faintest idea what his religion is, but Jim certainly meets the criterea of a good, ol' Midwestern Evangelist. The real goal of his talks is to get the audience fired up. Whether he knows it or not, he uses good, old evangelist speaking techniques. I'm not knocking it. I do that, too. By the way, Jim is a fan of the Omron Corporate Philosophy. Check it out. If only more companies had a broader vision than making top management rich.
The automation segment of Omron has showed impressive revenue results over the past year. Last year, new US President and COO Craig Bauer told me that he would be reorganizing the division into areas targeting certain hot markets. He did, and the focus showed. The previous automation head (an ex-Allen-Bradley manager as I recall) thought that Omron could go head-to-head with Rockwell Automation in the US and win against that company's formidable distribution channel. Omron probably has the products to do that, but marketing is often more a key to success than simply a good product line. Bauer's focus on packaging plus automotive and semiconductor has paid off. Look for more of the same from it this year.
8:30:09 AM 
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