AutomationXchange-- this is NOT a commercial!

So what makes all these people (about 25 each of supplier companies and end-user companies) come to Park City, Utah, when there isn't any snow? Why does this event grow every year, when the ISA show, the Sensors show, and National Manufacturing (what is it now, National Manufacturing Day?)Week are shrinking into nothingness? The answer is need. The end users who attend, like Dow, Abbott Labs, Pfizer, and so on, have projects for which they are looking for innovative solutions. The suppliers and system integrators who attend, like Rockwell, Invensys Wonderware, Siemens, Pepperl+Fuchs, Magnetrol, Maverick Technologies, and many more, are looking for innovative ways to create partnerships with end users. In the past, end users and suppliers had vastly different agendas when it came to "partnerships." Suppliers were looking for dumb end users who would agree to a single source supplier contract so that the supplier could ooch up the prices and ooch down the quality of service. End users were looking for beaten down vendors who would agree to give up more and more of their profit margin every year in lower prices and better service at lower cost to the supplier. None of this worked, of course. At AutomationXchange, Jerry Gipson, from Dow, provided a vastly different view of partnering that begins and ends with "win-win." We'll be posting the video of Jerry's talk on ControlGlobal.com soon. And that's why all these people came to Park City.