A couple of weeks ago NAED held its 2026 National meeting in Orlando. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend this year as I committed to speak at the Electric League of Western PA on the topic of Improving Project Profitability thinking that the NAED meeting would be the week before Mother’s Day (as usual), but … next time I’ll look at the calendar first but I thought it was important to keep my commitment. (That Tuesday I spoke to over 200 contractors, distributors, reps, and manufacturers. I’ll be sharing more soon.)
Anyways, back to NAED.
While I didn’t attend, I had a number of calls and emails, some during the conference. There were observations about:
- Distributor turnout
- The hotel (physical layout and more)
- Service provider feedback
- The need for a “pop-up emcee.”
- And NAED initiatives which included:
- A new NAED logo
- A workforce development initiative to attract talent to the distribution industry
- ProjectNexus being announced (which is the formal name for the oft-discussed “Where’s My Stuff” initiative which has been championed by Wes Smith when he was chair and is being brought to life under his NAED presidency.
NAED Unveils ProjectNexus
According to the Merriman-Webster Dictionary, terms that define “nexus” are:
- Connection / link
- A causal link
- A connected group or series, and/or
- Center, Focus
Perhaps these are the reasons why IDEA, presumably in conjunction with NAED, selected for the name of the “Where’s My Stuff” initiative to be ProjectNexus.
Prior to NAED, Scott Costa from NAED shared the following press release and invited me to publish and/or reach out to Wes Smith and Scott Wagner with any questions.
The press release:
NAED Selects IDEA and Pull Logic Joint Venture to Develop Industry-Owned ‘Where’s My Stuff?’ Supply-Chain Visibility Solution
The National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED), through its Digital Center of Excellence, announced that its Board has authorized a co-investment arrangement with the Industry Data Exchange Association (IDEA) and Pull Logic to build the first of its kind, industry-owned, ‘Where’s My Stuff?’ middleware solution. The initiative is intended to significantly improve transparency into equipment schedules and shipment status across the electrical supply chain, from manufacturers and representatives through distributors and contractor job sites.
The initiative will be called “ProjectNexus.”
Working in close collaboration with the National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA), and the National Electrical Manufacturers Representatives Association (NEMRA), known as “The Alliance to Electrify America”, this effort brings together leading trade organizations to shape requirements, guide governance, and encourage broad adoption across the channel.
Today, supply-chain visibility in the electrical industry remains highly manual, forcing frontline teams into constant “fire-fighting” as they chase updates through portals, spreadsheets, emails, and phone calls. ‘Where’s My Stuff?’ is being designed to shift that reality toward proactive execution by enabling trusted, system-to-system information sharing under NAED-led governance.
“It has taken considerable effort to be at this point, and we are now positioned to move ahead with purpose and confidence. Providing meaningful visibility of material—from manufacturing, through representatives and distributors, to contractor job sites—is now within reach,” Wes Smith, President and CEO of NAED said about the steps begin taken.
“The ‘ProjectNexus’ effort creates a powerful product that will provide a long-term solution to a problem we have all experienced,” Paul Kennedy, President and CEO of DSG and NAED Chair said. “Working with all associations to create this product builds on the historic alliance of our supply chain.”
IDEA, founded in 1998 and jointly owned by NAED and NEMA, brings decades of standards leadership and industry-scale data exchange experience.
“Right now, tracking material across the electrical supply chain means phone calls, emails, and spreadsheet chasing. Our partnership with NAED and Pull Logic on ‘ProjectNexus’ changes that: enabling trusted visibility from manufacturers through distributors to end-user customers. Building industry-wide solutions is what IDEA has been doing for the past two decades,” said Patrick Knight, president and CEO of IDEA.
Pull Logic contributes advanced technical expertise rooted in research conducted at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Supply Chain & Logistics Institute.
The joint venture will design and deliver the middleware that supports scalable participation, improves coordination across trading partners, and strengthens outcomes for customers.
“NEMA applauds NAED and IDEA for this joint investment to develop ‘ProjectNexus,’ a solution designed to improve real-time visibility into equipment order status across the electrical supply chain,” NEMA President and CEO Debra Phillips said. “This line-of-sight has never been more important to our industry as contractors, distributors, manufacturer representatives, and manufacturers are hard at work to meet the unprecedented demand for electrical products that are enhancing our grid, homes, businesses, and transport systems.”
“For our electrical contractors, uncertainty in material delivery isn’t just an inconvenience, it directly impacts project schedules, workforce planning, and labor efficiencies,” said David Long, President and CEO of the National Electrical Contractors Association. “’ProjectNexus’ is a critical step toward giving our members the real-time visibility they need to move from reactive problem-solving to proactive installation of electrical materials. By connecting information across the entire supply chain, from manufacturers to the job site, we’re helping our contractors reduce delays, improve coordination, and deliver greater value to the customer. This kind of transparency strengthens not just individual contractors, but the performance of the entire electrical industry.”
‘Where’s My Stuff?’ isn’t just a question — it’s the daily reality across our channel,” Jim Johnson, President and CEO of the National Electrical Manufacturers Representatives Association added. “Across the electrical supply chain, success depends on having accurate, real-time information and access to that information at every handoff. This initiative is about eliminating uncertainty and giving the entire channel a unified, trusted view of material status so teams not only get products to the job site when they’re needed, but also have the visibility required to adjust plans, allocate resources, and manage expectations when disruptions or delays occur. NEMRA is proud to support an industry-led solution that strengthens collaboration, improves accountability, and ultimately helps our customers build faster and more efficiently.”
“Distributors need better tools to give customers accurate, timely answers about their orders. IDEA is positioned to build solutions the entire industry can trust and use. Graybar supports IDEA because tackling supply-chain visibility requires industry-wide collaboration,” said Danna Stone, IDEA Board Chair and Senior Vice President of Marketing for Graybar.
By aligning associations, distributors, manufacturers, representatives, and technology leaders, NAED is establishing a durable, industry-owned foundation for digital collaboration across the electrical channel.
Questions for ProjectNexus
Okay, you know me … refuse the opportunity to ask questions?
So, I reached out to Wes, Scott, and Jay Andrews, IDEA’s Platform Director for ProjectNexus with the following questions, many of them the results of conversations from people who attended the General Session (not as many as desired) and either their colleagues or others who have heard of ProjectNexus:
- For those who were not at the conference, are not a member of NAED, and/or have not read TED or LinkedIn to hear about this initiative, describe Project Nexus and why it is important. What is the benefit to a manufacturer to be involved? To a distributor? What is the ROI for both parties?
- Is this an NAED initiative or is NAED endorsing an IDEA product? Who has responsibility for the product and making the initiative successful? (and yes, I know it’s joint, but someone has responsibility, a revenue goal.) If it is joint, does that infer that NAED has a compensation element?
- What defines “success?” What are the metrics and timelines that the industry should consider?
- What is NAED’s sales and marketing investment? If only “time” and “relationships,” that puts the onus on IDEA.
- What is the role of distributor ERPs? Have Epicor, NetSuite, and Infor participation been engaged yet? If not, what is the strategy to get them involved to facilitate distributor integration?
- Having seen channel initiatives before, I know the key to success is distributor involvement and, specifically, large / national chain involvement (usage). Which national chains have committed? Has AD endorsed to help drive manufacturer and distributor involvement?
- What is the cost, or at least the model, for manufacturer and distributor involvement? Knowing manufacturers will be entering their budgeting phase in the next 2 months, this is critical to ensuring adoption in 2027.
- Given the number of manufacturers and distributors that are involved in projects, with many manufacturers being small to mid-sized and perhaps infrequent activity with any particular distributor, and many with limited IT organizations, what is the critical mass to make this beneficial for a distributor? How can NAED get small to mid-sized companies onboard?
- Manufacturer IT departments will inevitably be involved with a concern of security. Distributors will be concerned about accuracy of information as well as mapping to company, customer, branch, etc. (more commercial issues) with IT also thinking about security. The sense is that the standard security issues will be addressed (i.e., SOC standards, etc.) but there is concern about “devil is in the details” and no one seems to want to be an early adopter until the system hits a critical mass to show it can handle complexity. What is your feedback on this?
- Jay – I understand that an element plays off of OrdrTrak but many are not aware of what it was and, from those I’ve spoken with, it didn’t seem to get much traction. What was learned from OrdrTrak?
And another area that I did not touch on, given the audience for the questions, was the role of the rep and the cost for them to be involved or if this is part of the manufacturer investment (which, personally, It should be.)
Wes subsequently responded that there is more background and he’d like to set up a call to discuss. Which would be great although I shared that I would like to either record, so I would not misinterpret / mis-write anything, or if in conjunction he could write his answers to the questions so it could be a Q&A article.
I’m waiting for Wes to respond from an NAED perspective, and have a call scheduled with Patrick Knight, President of IDEA, to learn more.
Next Steps
- If you are not familiar with ProjectNexus, I encourage you to, on
IDEA’s website. - I look forward to talking to Patrick and to Wes’ response. For such a major industry initiative, which has potential if all are involved (otherwise manufacturers, reps / agents, and distributors will need dual systems), it’s important that the messaging be widespread. AD represents more distributors than NAED does and there are more manufacturers that do not belong to NAED so, a measure of success is getting the message out to generate support from a broad audience.
- For those who don’t know Pull Logic, IDEA became an investor when Pull Logic closed their latest round earlier this year.
- From your knowledge of ProjectNexus, does the concept sound like it would be of value to you / your company? What percentage of your sales (manufacturer) / purchases (distributor) needs to be involved for this to be beneficial to you?
- As a prospective customer, what else would you like to know about ProjectNexus?
