This interview is part of a monthly series of association president interviews. Find past MDM interviews at www.mdm.com/interviews. This article originally appeared in MDM Premium. Learn more about MDM Premium.
The Power Transmission Distributors Association’s outgoing and incoming presidents recently spoke with MDM Editor Lindsay Konzak about challenges in the industry, association successes building leadership in the younger generation, and PTDA’s push on the motion control front.
Drew Tucci, director of sales & marketing of Eastern Bearings, Inc., Waltham, MA, finishes his tenure as president at the end of 2009. Keith Nowak, president of MPT Drives Inc., Madison Heights, MI, was elected president at PTDA’s Industry Summit in San Diego, CA, last month and will take the helm in 2010.
MDM: It seems like you’ve been pretty successful creating a forum for your younger members.
Drew Tucci: We have a pretty strong focus on that, making sure there’s something for everyone. We’ve also been doing a good job with the Executive Development Conference, where we bring the next level – future business leaders of our industry – together, educate them, capture their ideas and create the ultimate goal of networking throughout the association. We’ve also been doing a good job of getting our content online through PT Interactive Online. A lot of our training tools and aids are now online and accessible to our membership.
MDM: What else has been a priority for you in the past year?
Tucci: We’ve been very active and successful in promoting our image in the motion control market segment. It’s been a very strong push of our association and certainly mine for the past seven years.
MDM: Could you elaborate on why you decided to make that push?
Tucci: A large portion of our members are already in the motion control arena and are expanding further into the motion control market segment. It’s a market segment that is expected to grow significantly in the coming years and its crucial to identify what our customers’ motion control needs are and will be and how to be successful in servicing our customers in that arena. In doing that, we’ve instituted the Motion Control Showcase, where our manufacturers display their products, which helps make those products and those vendors more visible throughout the association.
PTDA also hired a consultant with significant experience in motion control to strategize and work to create an image for PTDA. This will let people know that we really are in this business. It’s not something we’re just getting into. Our members do $800 million in sales annually in motion control products.
MDM: It’s not just an ancillary thing.
Tucci: We’re in the business. Now we want everybody to know we’re really in the business. We also want to provide for both our existing and future members, who probably don’t have a home, a forum to come together and network about where the business is going.
Keith Nowak: I’m going to continue on Drew’s efforts of the motion control focus as well. That has really taken off. We need to keep enforcing that and stay on that track. Because a lot of the technology in our industry is antiquated, motion control’s a whole new element and more high-tech. It’s also an avenue for most of us to make a lot more money.
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Tucci: It’s a very fragmented market today, because first you need to know what role you play. In motion control, there are integrators, panel builders, hardware sellers, value-added resellers, and so on. This is an extension of what we do today. It’s motion control. It starts a belt drive. It starts a chain drive. We hope we can bring more efficiency to that sector, give those hardware distributors opportunities to succeed at selling mechanical or electromechanical products.
MDM: What have been the challenges, up to this point, though, in making what you’re talking about regarding the motion control industry a reality?
Nowak: I think we’re making progress. But, like as Drew mentioned earlier, I think one of the biggest challenges we have is making people aware that we’re already motion control manufacturers and distributors. The association as a whole has taken it very seriously, incorporating motion control objectives into our strategic plan a lot more often than we ever did. We have very specific meetings, workshops and training geared towards motion control. We’re working to make sure that the industry knows that we are in it for the long haul.
MDM: You are focused on changing people’s perceptions of what you do.
Nowak: Right. We’re not just old sprockets and chain guys anymore.
MDM: What are some of the challenges facing your industry?
Nowak: I think one of the biggest challenges we’re going to have moving forward in 2010 is, as we come out of this recession, we going to begin hiring people and getting qualified people into jobs again. A lot of us laid off a lot of people, and going forward, we definitely want to focus on hiring qualified people. Working with Industrial Careers Pathway and their programs with industrial distribution programs across North America is important. We’re also looking to hold a product application workshop where we train entry-level employees with hands-on classes of how to actually do the work and get involved in the products more specifically, and, as a result, become a better asset to employers.
Tucci: I think also, through this downturn, we’ve all reevaluated and reinvented our businesses. As an association, we need to make sure we are capturing what’s taking place, the new business model, the new trends that will take hold and make sure we are bringing our members the content, data and resources that meet their needs.
Nowak: And we’ve figured out how to get by with less at our companies. We’re going to need tools to help us continue along that trend, such as tools to help cross-train more employees.
Tucci: We’ve been constantly developing tools that help on the training side, which is important. Now we’re looking at, operationally, how do we help our members become more efficient, and how do we help them strategize and meet new market demands and changes?
MDM: Focusing on helping members build operational efficiencies seems like it’s become especially important in the past year due to the economic situation.
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Tucci: Your partners are your manufacturers. And your association is your ultimate place to network with those partners. You learn how to become more efficient and proficient together. To do that, you need to work on those areas where your companies are doing things that are redundant that really should be synergized, such as our effort to standardize formats for transmitting price updates, the PPIF. There are so many different ways processes are handled. Why not create standardized tools in order to become more effective and efficient? It saves everyone time. Our industry needs that.
Nowak: We’ve created guidelines around processes such as returned goods and debit and credit procedures. We’re constantly trying to streamline and standardize those.
MDM: Do you feel like you’ve made a lot of progress on this front?
Tucci: We have made a lot of progress, certainly in standardizing the transmission of pricing files, throughout the years. We continue to modify and expand and massage that so it becomes more effective. But, yes, we are getting into areas that a lot of people didn’t want to talk about in the past. We’re becoming far more open as an association with our members.
MDM: What else is PTDA working on?
Tucci: We’re working hard to make sure we’re meeting our members’ needs with trend and financial data.
Nowak: That is a challenge. It’s an expensive endeavor but something we need to look at because it’s something our members need.
Tucci: Something else that is worth talking about is what we tried this year at the Industry Summit for the first time ever. We put a group of privately-held distributors in a room to share best business practices. It’s never been done, and it went over fantastically. You don’t have to reinvent every single idea. Why not just share some of these successes? Why can’t one company just talk about how well they’ve done in freight recovery or reducing medical costs?
MDM: So, what’s coming in the next year for PTDA?
Nowak: This coming year is PTDA’s 50th anniversary. We’re going to focus on that and use it as a marketing tool to get our name out and maybe re-engage some members who haven’t been active lately.
MDM: What is PTDA’s key selling point – what message do you want to send to potential members?
Tucci: I’d love to see us marketed and perceived as, “the organization that is an essential networking asset for distributors and manufacturers alike.” I really can’t imagine doing business in this industry and not being a member.
Nowak: For a smaller distributor, it’s very difficult to stay connected without benefit of an association. You don’t get the bigwigs flying into your town when you’re a smaller distributor. And by the same token, you can’t afford to fly to all the major manufacturers. So to have them all in one city, at one time, over a three-day span during our annual Industry Summit, more than pays for the trip.
Tucci: It’s the only place, in our industry, where a distributor can influence real change and enhancements to their product lines. They get the opportunity to display their management, their leadership and how they drive their business. It’s the only time those executives may actually get a chance to see that. I can’t think of anything more valuable.
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