Van Meter Expands Robotics; Diversifies Industrial Offering

The industrial segment of the electrical distribution market is undergoing change due to a number of market dynamics including reshoring / near shoring, the impact of climate technologies / EV, manufacturer employment challenges, the need for improved productivity / capacity coupled with unit cost reduction, increasing employee healthcare costs and more.

What this means is that

• While there are industrial construction opportunities given the need for new facilities and renovation, there is also a need for companies to install new production lines.
• These new production lines inevitably require automation and, increasingly, companies are considering robotics.

Further electrical distributors that serve the industrial market are also considering other complementary markets to diversify their value proposition. This can be into services, networking, cyber security / software, power transmission, industrial supplies and more.

Once company that is moving into the robotics space to offer their customers more is Van Meter.

Their recent press release focuses on the benefits that industrial plants are seeking with a headline of “Industrial plants now have access to smarter, more flexible robotics solutions to enhance operational excellence in manufacturing.”

The press release states : Van Meter Inc., a 100-percent employee-owned electrical and automation distributor and solution provider is excited to announce new partnerships with three industry-leading robotics supplier partners: Comau, DENSO, and Doosan.

As OEMs and other industrial plants struggle through safety, productivity, and workforce management challenges, a 2022 study from Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute indicates that companies of all sizes are increasingly turning to robotics and automation to stay productive and competitive.

“Our partnerships with these innovative robotics lines allow Van Meter to expand its automation offering so we can help our customers gain efficiency and transform how they work,” said Mike Hermann, Vice President of Industrial Sales at Van Meter Inc. “Robotics have a wide range of applications that allow customers to meet their production goals, redirect workers to more meaningful tasks, and assign dangerous, repetitive, and high-precision plant floor tasks to robots that can handle them safely and consistently.”

According to a Grand View Research study, the industrial robotics segment is expected to exhibit a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 11 percent from 2021 to 2028, with growth attributed to a substantial increase in adoption of robots to carry out automation processes.

This recent expansion aligns with Van Meter’s ongoing mission to help industrial manufacturers improve operational efficiency through smart, flexible manufacturing solutions that increase plant floor safety, boost plant floor productivity, and help workers make impacts in new ways.

Van Meter’s comprehensive robotics solution offering helps industrial customers deploy innovative technology to meet growing consumer demands, stay competitive, and exceed their operational goals.

To learn more about these partnerships, visit https://www.vanmeterinc.com/blog/robotics-supplier-partners.”

Given that Van Meter is a Rockwell distributor covering Minnesota and Iowa, it highlights a path that Rockwell distributors are pursuing, inevitably to support Rockwell’s robotic initiatives, and is something that Rockwell distributors focused on the future will need to diversify into (albeit the challenge for some will probably relate to the size of the opportunity versus the investment for qualified personnel.)

For those other industrial automation distributors, it may represent an opportunity if they can attract robotics “leaders” and have the staff. Additionally, for Rockwell distributors, this could be an offering to consider for your non-Rockwell APRs if you offer industrial automation solutions in those APRs (and yes, you may need different staff to handle those lines / areas.)

And if you are not an industrial distributor, the takeaway is understand your customer.

• For other distributors – What other products do they buy / need? What else can you offer them? Consider that your goal is “share of their spend”, not just “share of their electrical spend.”
• For manufacturers – where are your customers buying? Isn’t that where you need to be and broaden your opportunities? Perhaps it gives you “first opportunity advantage”?
• For reps – do you know what your distributors sell? Are they only selling electrical products?

Opportunities abound.