Participants at the 48th National Plant Engineering & Management Show in Chicago next month expect to see the latest products unveiled and make contacts with existing or new suppliers. Part of National Manufacturing Week, the NPEM Show is hailed as the largest industrial forum and marketplace in North America and provides many distributors with a fresh look at new MRO products. If nothing else, it offers a chance for distributors to see what their competition is up to.

As always, the event is an excellent opportunity for distributors to meet manufacturers, both domestic and from abroad, and to find innovations they can pass on to end users. Last year's show drew more than 23,000 people, nearly 90 percent of whom had purchasing authority. The show will be held March 16-19 at McCormick Place in conjunction with the National Design Engineering Show. About 80 members of the American Supply & Machinery Manufacturers' Assn. and the Industrial Distribution Assn. are expected to exhibit again this year.

"The plant engineering and the design engineering show are a multi-faceted opportunity to look at technology,'' says Daniel Matis, president of Matis Inc., a distributor in Bridgeview, Ill.
"It's important for us to go there ...the major distributors will be there to sell product and while they're selling, they're also looking."

David Thompson, president of Kennedy Manufacturing Co. in Van Wert, Ohio, a regular exhibitor at show, said attending is well worth the effort for distributors because they can talk with several of their leading manufacturers in one day while viewing new products. "We get a lot of leads when people come through the show,'' Thompson says. "We have a lot of bigger product that doesn't always get demonstrated and we like to follow those leads with the distributors that the end user is doing business with."

I.D.A. president Jack Meizlish says the NPEM Show is valuable for niche distributors, but has its limitations. "I think it is growing and it certainly will serve a growing role in some distributor segments, but...I don't necessarily see it being a broad-brush stroke for the entire industrial distribution membership,'' he says.

ASMMA executive director Charles Stockinger hopes more distributors will attend and find products for their customers. "You name it, we're interested in helping those distributor organizations get their value-added message across," he says.

Aside from distributors, those attending the show include end users and professionals involved in plant, facility and maintenance engineering; electrical engineering; plant and facility maintenance management; materials handling; operations engineering and information/ systems technology. Several special-focus product pavilions will be open, which for the NPEM Show include fluid handling technologies, industrial packaging solutions, lighting, maintenance software, power protection, safety/ health/environmental equipment, tools and energy management.

Stockinger and others say including Industrial Distribution Day in the show is much more than a symbolic gesture. "Our participation in that show is basically an emphatic statement to the industrial MRO market that we support industrial distribution as the preferred source for MRO product acquisition," he says. "Initially we conceived ID day as a high-profile event to emphasize our support of the industry; all of the industry."

Distributors who attend even a portion of the NPEM Show will benefit, Matis and others say. With large general-line distribution houses selling products at booths and connecting with new suppliers, smaller companies "at least may want to take a look and see what their competitors are doing," Matis says. "They have booths to do business on a national level, so local companies with similar product lines have new competition. They should be aware that this is going on."