TTI, a leading specialist distributors of passive, connector, electromechanical and discrete components, is seeing significant growth among customers implementing Industry 4.0 or ‘Smart Factory’, and, according to Norbert Piefer, European Director Industry Marketing – Industrial at TTI, Inc., the company has the franchises, experienced personnel and infrastructure to support this trend.
“The Smart Factory concept leads to end-to-end process optimisation”, comments Piefer. “In Europe, Germany is the leading country with a variety of local and global companies and institutions, sponsored and supported by the German government. Industry 4.0 is really the merging of two very different IT worlds – the office/administrative world and the factory floor. IT systems and components used in the office environment are not ruggedized and are not reliable enough for use on the harsh environment of the factory floor.”
“As a distributor that means we invest in training our field and back office personnel to provide a new level of technical support, as well as investing in stock the latest technology from leading suppliers”, he continues. “That’s one of the reasons we entered into our partnership agreement with TE Connectivity, so that we have access to its newest technology such as its Industrial Communications family or ARISO™ contactless connectivity - the latter allows power, signal and data connectivity without any physical connection in virtually any environment.“ Molex, with its Ultralock family and factory floor networking capabilities, is another example of a manufacturing partner with products available through TTI that are key to this sector."
He concludes: “TTI also works with customers to develop specific, integrated logistics and supply chain partnership solutions which lie at the heart of a successful Smart Factory implementation. Thus, we are leading the way in end-to-end optimization as an industrial-focused distribution partner for our customers.”