Not many posts this week, as I've been swamped. Two day trip to Chicago. Company holiday party and two days of almost nonstop meetings. Followed by a trip to Cincinnati to visit Balluff and Advantech Automation. Nice lunch at Pappadeaux with Lynette Anderson, Advantech marketing manager and new PR person Chuck Garret. Some good information from the trip even though I should have been finishing my asset management article for the January issue.
I like the way Balluff is talking these days. During my last visit there about four years ago, they were talking maintenance. The marketing strategy was to convince tool crib supervisors to replace their current sensors with Balluff ones (Balluff makes a large line of sensor products). That seemed to me to be a self-limiting strategy. Seemed the same to marketing manager Tom Draper, too, evidently. They now position their products in coordination with manufacturing strategies, such as using sensors for error-proofing (aka Poka Yoke), or for identification of parts and assemblies.
Advantech has a line of signal conditioning and data acquisition products. In the late 90s during the dot com explosion, the company had developed a line of industrial personal computers. Hoping to catch the IPO frenzy, it reorganized to establish the Cincinnati automation division as a stand alone company with the goal of an IPO. Well the market crashed and computers became a commodity. Meanwhile, companies are finding new uses for data acquisition equipment. They need factory floor information to feed their voracious business software applications. Advantech has rebounded nicely with its Adam product line.
6:51:50 AM 
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