Did anyone get the invitation for the Rockwell Automation (Entek) Vibration Users Group Meeting? Are you planning on attending.

Here's the text from the email I received. I've also attached the flier.


To: Valued Rockwell Automation Customer

In the past year, I have had an opportunity to travel the country meeting many customers and am consistently asked the same question, “Where did Entek go?”

In order to answer that question and others you may have, we’ve decided to create an annual Rockwell Automation Vibration Users Group event. This event will be held in conjunction with one of the largest tradeshows in the industry—the Automation Fair™. With its focus on solving a wide variety of issues affecting plant performance and uptime, reliability, and asset management, the Automation Fair event provides a natural environment for a forum on machinery predictive maintenance and condition monitoring.

Automation Fair caters to over 10,000 participants from maintenance, engineering, operations and management across all industries, such as oil and gas, power generation, metals, mining, water/wastewater, food and beverage, life sciences, home and personal care, automotive and many more. This two-day event showcases the latest technology and software, includes presentations from leaders throughout the industries, and provides an opportunity for training and hands-on experience with the products.

Although you won’t see the Entek brand any more, the technological advancements, software leadership and world-class service and support that are standard with the Allen-Bradley brand will elevate you to an entirely new level.

We hope you will join us at the Rockwell Automation Vibration Users Group and the Automation Fair events to experience the difference. Please don’t hesitate to contact me or any of your local Rockwell Automation representatives if you have any questions about these events.

Best regards,

Mike Burrows
Regional Business Lead, Americas
Integrated Condition Monitoring
Rockwell Automation

Vibrtn_User_Grp_flyer_electronic.pdf (367 Kb, 37 downloads)

I received this too. I plan on attending the November 13 meeting.
Do you plan on attending?

Don

[QUOTE]
Although you won’t see the Entek brand any more, the technological advancements, software leadership and world-class service and support that are standard with the Allen-Bradley brand will elevate you to an entirely new level. /QUOTE]

I'm debating on whether to spend the time and money. You gotta love a clueless guy who make that kind of statement. I'm thinking I will go just to see what comes of it.

Dave

I too received this message. Regretably, I will not be able to attend. It's too bad as we are entertaining the idea of purchasing an enpac 2500.

This is the new trend of the legacy companies to be in total and absolute control of the environment when it comes to customer contact. Can anyone comment on why they would prefer that format? Do you think it is to support the users best interest or the vendors?

You rarely see these same legacy companies at today's relevant conference and events.

I am all for user groups but I encourage these companies to acknowledge that a vibrant (no pun intended) community already exists. They should choose to participate in the maintenance and reliability community in addition to "behind closed doors" user groups.

There are host of new companies that are eager to support the maintenance and reliability community - and they deserve support in return - if the products they represent are of the quality and deliver the functions needed.

My message to the legacy companies is come out of your corporate cubicles and visit the real world. It is a great place, you can learn a lot and I bet you can make as much money as you make right now sitting in your ivory towers. I cannot imagine that it would hurt that much at all to get out in the real world.

Terry O

quote:

Can anyone comment on why they would prefer that format? Do you think it is to support the users best interest or the vendors?

They want to maximize shareholders value (i.e. profit) as should any business. Emerson does the same thing with the old CSI users meeting. It became very watered down from a technical or useful information aspect, and focused on Emerson instead of the customer , in my opinion.

The end user is of little value to most of the new entrants to the Reliability world. it's all about relationships at high levels, such as Maintenance Manager and VP's. With IT, Finance and Process Engineers invloved in most relaibility software purchases now, most have decided to sell at that level. Providing good support is secondary to getting the next big deal (>$100,000) or more. Providing good support costs money.

They may think that going to a trade show with their competitors there is opening pandora's box. Hopefully, the competitive aspect of American (and worldwide) business will drive buyers to the best value.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Bill Kilbey,

Bill, I agree whole heartedly. We have been a CSI customer forever and IMHO years ago they had the best training facility i had ever attended. Their customer service was second to none. Now when I call for support I get a press 1 for this and press 2 for that etc. When I do finally get somebody with body temperture, I can't understand a word they are saying and most don't have clue as to what I am talking about. And this seemed to start when Emerson bought it. Typical corporate screw it up job. Sorry for the vent.

For Entek, the change in focus certainly shows on their website as well. Starting at the Rockwell automation main page, you have to go to "other brands" to even find Entek.

The Enteract conference proceedings (articles) that used to be available for free are now gone (at least CSI is keeping their articles available). As far as I know, the Entek support forum is now gone (if I'm mistaken, please let me know...I'd like to find the address). Called up to ask for support and got a programmer that didnt really know anything about vibration. He couldn't understand why I would ever want to trend the machine speed extracted from a spectrum. (He suggested that I look up the speed that had been entered into the database instead).

I think Bill made a great point. They are most certainly doing what they perceive to be in their own best self interest. Unfortunately, that's not always what is in our interests.

I replied to the email, stating that 1)I could not attend, 2)would love to hear what they have to say, and 3)how disappointed I am that they have turned their backs on my company, and everone else involved in portable condition monitoring systems.

A gentlemen emailed me back, and said he would love to come and visit with us after this users meeting, and discuss with us, here's the good part, that they realize the relevance of portable condition monitoring, and that they value us as customers.

I hope they do visit.

I hope they remember that there are lots of us, still out there collecting data, and saving money for our customers.

If it's another sales pitch, I will do everything within my power to convince my company to get rid of their stuff, and purchase from someone else, even if it means converting our databases, by hand, again!

Stan,

Keep us posted with what transpires. I started to e-mail the guy too, and chastise him for much the same thing. I am considering going to this D&P show though, so I am going to wait until I make up my mind.

Dave

I was snooping around the Rockwell site for some Allen bradley technical stuff, when I was offered Entek as an option.
All 5 hits were displayed on this page. Nothing looks particularly interesting to me.

http://literature.rockwellautomation.com/idc/groups/pub...Val=EN%20-%20English

So, did anyone attend? Anything to share with the rest of us?

I was able to attend and found the meeting beneficial to me. They had covered what was being updated in regards to hardware and software advancements.
They also covered: integrated condition monitoring, The History of Vibration Analysis, How to start a condition based maintenance program (this presentation was very weak), a case history from a utility on integrating portable and online monitoring into EMonitor software, and had plenty of time for Q&A. They also were eager to get any feedback from the members on what we as users would like to see in the future for upgrades, features and support.
Not all attendees had a positive attitude about Entek, and they let their opinions know and I think the Rockwell employees took the ideas as constructive comments for development.
In all, I am glad I attended. Although, I wish it would have been structured to allow for more interaction time between users so we could network amongst ourselves a little more.

Chris

I was able to attend too. Chris's comments hit the nail on the head. It was informative and in my opinion a very good start for the first annual meeting. Covered stand alone protable programs to online monitoring.

quote:

Originally posted by Gerold:
I was able to attend and found the meeting beneficial to me. They had covered what was being updated in regards to hardware and software advancements...

Any details on the hardware and software updates? What is coming down the pipe?

Steve

For those of you who attended, thanks for your responses. We are meeting this morning with our local and regional company who carries the product line. I am interested in how this goes, as far as them sharing with us what is going on ( if they know ).

I'll let you know what I find out.

Very good, informative meeting. I am hopeful that Rockwell Condition Monitoring is recognizing ( again ) that portable collection systems are still a viable product line. Thery're still trying to push permanent monitoring installations, so we'll see.

Stan,

Did they have anything to say about when the 2500 will be bug free and everything working?

Dave

We solved our Entek issues with a switch to CSI and the 2130...and we haven't looked back since.

Thud,

Sory about your luck

Dave