Welcome to Advanced Automation, a podcast by Calvary Robotics, where you'll find industry leaders and experts sharing their thoughts on the world of automation. Hello, everyone, and thanks for listening. I'm Josh Carvel, your host for this installment of Advanced Automation. Topic of today's episode is about our partner, Minuteman Empire Automation Systems. Established in nineteen seventy, Minuteman Empire Automation Systems is an industry leader and technical provider of industrial automation products. To talk more about the company is the vice president of sales and marketing, Scott Pask. With over eighteen years of experience in industrial automation, Scott's expertise ranges from motion control to robotics to pneumatics and beyond. Alright. Thanks again, Scott. I appreciate you taking the time to be with us today, and I just wanted to have you take us through your history, you know, the path that led you to where you are today. Yeah. Thank you, Josh, for the introduction. My eighteen years in industrial automation distribution started as a sales engineer with Empire Air Systems in two thousand and four before transitioning into a role as a vice president of sales and marketing with Minuteman Empire Automation Systems in twenty fifteen. Prior to Minuteman Empire Automation Systems, I had twenty years of industrial automation experience with Sanco Bain, a manufacturer of industrial reinforced technical textiles. I am very excited about the direction of industrial automation and new advanced technologies coming to this market. Great. Can you tell us more about Minuteman Empire Automation? You know, the name and the offerings, that sort of thing? Certainly. Minuteman Empire Automation Systems is a technical value provider of industrial automation products and solutions. We were formerly known as Minuteman Controls and Empire Air Systems and have been supporting customers across the Northeast for over fifty two years with facilities in Wakefield, Massachusetts and Rochester, New York. Our CEO, Don Davis, has been instrumental in developing the culture and vision that drives our success, which is built on integrity, trust, and respect for all customers and manufacturing partners. We distribute products from many of the leading global manufacturers ranging from electrical, motion control, process, pneumatics, robotics, safety, sensing, vacuum, and vision to support a variety of markets including assembly, automotive, electronics, energy, food and beverage, life science, medical devices, packaging, and semiconductor. That's that's a quite a list there. That's impressive. Very much so. Yep. And so how does a partnership with Minuteman Empire Automation Systems work to better your clients? That is a great question. We pride ourselves on ease of doing business through a dedicated customer driven cross functional team composed of customer service representatives, technical sales, and application engineers. All are committed to the success of customers ranging from manufacturers, OEMs, machine builders, and integrators. Our experienced technical sales staff and engineering professionals allows us to become extension of customers by providing value added technical services and solutions. These services and solutions include technical sales support, electrical mechanical engineering support, robotic reach studies and simulations, programming of robots, PLCs, HMIs, vision application support, and on-site product training. Wonderful. So for a Minuteman Empire Automation Systems, they have to stay informed about a lot of new products and technologies. How do you guys do that? How do you keep up? Our manufacturing partners, do a great job informing us of new products and technologies through distributor advisory council meetings, in person sales or webinars. They also provide our sales and application engineers with the necessary technical training to successfully support these products. We are members of the Association for Advanced Automation, the Association for High-tech Distribution, and a ten yearly event in which several manufacturers present new products and technologies. We actively communicate with the network of distributors across the U. S. As part of the Industrial Technologies Group and are always learning of new products or technologies that are brought value to their customers. And lastly, we attend local and national sales, yeah, trade shows to learn of new products or technologies being introduced to the market and the potential value to our customer base and our business model. Wonderful. And I think you touched on a little bit, but once you gather kind of all this information about the new technology and products, how do you transfer that to your clients through webinars and things like that? Or. Yeah, another great question. Our preference is always, you know, face to face meetings with existing or new customers. These meetings allow us to better understand the customer's needs upon providing a value added solution. On-site lunch and learns or mini trade shows are also great platforms for us to showcase new products, technologies, especially for larger customer groups. We frequently accommodate virtual online meetings with customers. Our virtual room has been instrumental in allowing us to show the features and benefits of new products along with more technical in-depth review with application engineers while customers are allowed the convenience of staying at their location. We participate at local trade shows and tech expos within the Northeast and we are going to be attending and exhibiting at Eastech in May of twenty twenty three. Our marketing team is constantly posting and resharing new product content on social media platforms along with our YouTube channel. We send out quarterly newsletters to customers featuring the latest products, technologies, and applications. Almost amazing. So, what are some best practices for, you know, clients or future clients working with Minuteman Empire Automation Systems? I would have to say allowing us to become a trusted partner and integrate within a customer's value chain. Developing a strong relationship with regular communication allows us to better understand the customer's needs and challenges. We can respond quickly to their business needs by offering local face to face service and support, inventory management, cost reduction measures, or optimization strategies. By us creating and providing total cost solutions, it helps the customers to remain competitive, especially in today's, you know, changing economic conditions. Yeah, so true partnership and I would assume bringing you guys in early as possible is a best practice? I can't stress enough yet at, how we emphasize that. Great. So you've been in the industry for a while now. I don't wanna make you sound old because you're still a young man. But what's new and exciting or are you most excited about that's coming, you know, into the portfolio or coming on to Minuteman Empire Automation Systems, solutions or their portfolio? Yeah. I have to say the robotics industry is thriving, and we are very excited about the new products being developed by our manufacturing partners. You know, these include additional industrial, cooperative, collaborative, and mobile robots, You know, supporting augmented reality, digital twin, artificial intelligence, and vision guidance technologies for machine centric robotics, mechatronic, you know, versatile magnetic track technologies for smart factory and adaptive manufacturing platforms. Wonderful. So I assume so those are a lot of the current offerings that, you're looking to add that you might not already add because it sounds like a lot of the buzzwords that everyone's talking about are in that list you just said. It is. Yeah. So we've got a tremendous group of manufacturing partners that we work with and, you know, very excited to collaborate with them on these newer products and help us, you know, for our business needs, but then most importantly, you know, our customers' needs as well. So this sounds like a lot of exciting stuff. What are you not currently offering in your portfolio that you're looking to add? Yeah. We feel that our current portfolio and product diversification, addresses the needs of our customer base along with our business model. However, we are constantly monitoring fast growing and new industries to see what additional products are needed to support local manufacturing. We will often have dialogue with our existing manufacturing partners regarding new products to support these industries or we'll look at others outside of our existing portfolio. You know, these products are important for our value proposition to help increase overall equipment effectiveness, return on investment on your machines, and shorten the time to market for customers. Wonderful. What's a what's a great way, though, for our listeners to get in touch with you, specifically, or Empire, you know, a Minuteman Empire Automation Systems as a whole? Yeah. You can go to our website at w w w dot maseas dot com to see our latest news, feature technologies, products, and services being offered along with our online store. Our line card, index of manufacturers, and product flyers can also be found under the resource tab. The territory responsibilities for salespeople can be found under our contacts, and able to assist with product specifications and technical questions. All other general quotes and demo requests can also be completed online. Other inquiries can be directed into the local branch offices via phone, email, which is listed on our website. Scott, as we close out the episode today, I just wanted to let you have some finishing thoughts. I wanted to say thank you very much for Calvary Robotics for giving us this platform. And I'm just very excited about, you know, the the direction of industrial automation and our position as Minuteman Empire Automation Systems in supporting this market. Thanks again to Scott and Minuteman Automation Empire Systems for joining us today, and thank you to all the listeners for your time. Make sure subscribe to Advanced Automation wherever you get your podcasts, and head over to calvary robotics dot com to listen to other episodes, watch our series, Calvary TV, and lots of other great content about Calvary Robotics. Have a great day.
