Saturday, September 30, 2006

ABB visit What's the opposite of a press conference? It's a media tour by marketing people from a supplier who meet with editors of targeted publications to explain significant product or other news. And while some of us in the editorial community have written about the travel strains that have developed over the past few years where we go to a myriad of user conferences instead of a few trade shows to meet people, here's a case where the supplier marketing people must make an exhausting tour. In this case, I began the first of my six weeks of travel with a trip up to the Chicago office to meet with Mark Taft, Alicia Bauer, Bruce Reierson and Laura Patrick of ABB. They presented some preliminary product enhancement news in a frank exchange where Jane and Wes and I were able to question them at length. The final announcements won't be out for a month or so, but I must say that beginning with the 800xA announcement in January 2004 ABB has made a significant amount of progress in tightly integrating its array of control systems and advancing its state of the art. We followed the 3-hour meeting with dinner at the noted Chicago steak restaurant, Keefer's. In the interest of "what is said at dinner stays at dinner" let's just say that I had an animated conversation with Alicia such that I wound up eating only half of an excellent steak. I get pretty passionate about how our readers are industry leaders and what we're doing to serve them. Plus Alicia has been in her current role as marketing head for the 800xA system for just a few months and I once was a marketing manager. I'm not shy about sharing my experiences ;-) By the way, that's one of the joys of the editorial life--meeting intelligent people and trading ideas that we all care about. Bruce, by the way, is an OEE enthusiast. I have met few people in the industry with his enthusiasm for explaining ideas and technologies that can help manufacturers with their journeys to operational excellence. Gotta get him on a podcast show soon. 8:55:52 AM    comment []