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Latest Scoop
GE
and Fanuc to Dissolve Joint Venture
After 22 years of working together in the automation,
robotics and embedded computing markets, General Electric and Fanuc
Ltd.
of Japan announced plans to dissolve their joint venture, GE Fanuc
Automation Corp., Charlottesville, Va., by the end of the year.
“Everybody, in this economy, has taken a hard look at their
businesses
to see where they’re strong. We see this as an opportunity to focus
on
those, and for Fanuc to do the same,” said Ellie Holman, public
relations manager for GE Enterprise Solutions.
Mayer
Electric Looks to the Cloud for E-Commerce
Mayer Electric Supply, Birmingham, Ala., has become one
of the first companies to implement the new WebSpan cloud-based
integration platform developed by Hubspan and IBM. The service gives
Mayer the ability to provide its customers with seamless integration to
its online catalog and e-procurement services using services hosted and
managed on the Internet “cloud” by Seattle-based Hubspan.
The move to cloud computing was the best option to avoid the cost and
headaches of developing home-grown solutions for all the large
industrial customers that wanted to be able to move data from Mayer’s
e-commerce system to the customer’s enterprise system to create and
approve a purchase order and then back to Mayer’s system to place the
order (known as punch-in and punch-out), said Barry Carden, Mayer
Electric Supply’s vice president and chief information officer.
Sales
Managers Still Pounding Away
It’s the toughest economic climate the electrical
market has seen in the past 30 years. But there’s still one sure-fire
strategy that can get the salespeople on their customers’ appointment
calendars: new products that help electrical contractors and other end
users do their jobs faster, better, more safely and more
profitably.
Next month’s cover story in Electrical Wholesaling will explore the
successful survival tactics sales managers are using to get through
this
recession. The magazine’s editors found that many companies are still
having success on sales calls with new products.
Housing
Starts Improve for Fifth Consecutive Month
Production and permitting of new single-family homes
continued on an upward trajectory in July, according to the U.S.
Commerce Department. Meanwhile, substantial declines on the
multi-family
side dragged down the overall numbers, with combined single- and
multi-family starts down 1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate
of 581,000 units and combined single- and multi-family permits down 1.8
percent to a 560,000-unit rate.
DISC
Corp. nails 2009 electrical market forecast
Many industry observers were shocked when they saw so
many publicly held electrical distributors and electrical manufacturers
report 20 percent declines in sales in the recent bevy of
second-quarter
2009 financial reports. Not Herm Isenstein, president of DISC Corp.,
Orange, Conn., the leading provider of sales forecast data in the
electrical market. Back in January he forecast a 27-percent decline in
total 2009 industry sales and a 34-percent decline in the contractor
segment. Herm is not one to brag, but he also nailed the rate of
decline
in industry sales during the last economic downturn in 2001-2003.
People On The Move
Dumas named
VP for Graybar St. Louis district
Graybar Electric Co. (St. Louis.):Mike Dumas was named
district vice president for the company’s St. Louis regional
operations. Dumas succeeds Mike Fowler, who recently retired after six
years in the position and more than 35 years with the company. Before
being named district vice president, Dumas served as vice president,
comm/data sales at Graybar’s corporate headquarters in Clayton, Mo.,
and has been with the company for 22 years.
Grygera
named
Western regional sales manager for Schreder Lighting
Schreder Lighting USA (Chicago): Tim Grygera has been
appointed Western regional sales manager. In this newly established
position, Grygera will work closely with lighting specifiers,
designers,
engineers, electrical contractors and architects to develop viable and
dynamic exterior lighting solutions. Prior to joining Schreder Lighting
USA, he served as regional sales representative for Big Ass Fans and
also worked for Zumtobel Lighting, Ruud Lighting and Beta and Kramer
Lighting Brands.
On The Wire
Lighting
demand slides again in Q2
After a steep first quarter decline, NEMA’s Lighting
Systems Index contracted an additional 4.3 percent during the second
quarter of 2009. The drop marked the third consecutive quarter in which
the index has fallen to a new all-time low reading. The index was down
even more sharply on a year-over-year basis, dropping nearly 25
percent,
and has registered a cumulative drop of more than 30 percent from its
cyclical peak in early 2006.
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