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| Bob Black, President and CEO, Juki Automation Systems
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Hi again from the JPCA/Protec Show at Tokyo Big Sight. Day two was busy indeed, with large crowds in the halls and crowded booths.
Show estimates were more than 12,500 attendees visited Thursday, but final Thursday figures will only be given Friday morning. The weather continues to be spectacular, with clear skies and about 78 degrees, it's a shame to spend the whole day inside.
I think a few words are in order to describe the unique way they do shows like this in Japan. Every major company has a pre-staged presentation each hour, or sometimes twice an hour, covering the key products or services they want to sell.
These presentations are narrated by professional hired presenters, not people from the manufacturers themselves. They memorize complex speeches lasting 10 to 15 minutes giving great technical detail on information they themselves know nothing about.
It's fascinating the first day to watch these young men and women pacing the back of the hall, talking to themselves, as they practice their speeches. The amazing thing is they almost never make an error on stage.
The other unique point is that the competing companies all agree behind the scenes to time their show each hour not to conflict with adjoining companies. So while fighting each other for market share, everything is very polite. And the system works too, crowds faithfully gather in front of each booth, and stoically wait for the show to begin.
I ran into Denny McGuirk, President of the IPC, this morning. Denney was part of the shows Grand Opening, where the JPCA invites dignitaries from all the other Circuit Associations in the world to join in cutting the ribbon to open the show. It's about a 30 foot ribbon because about 15 guys are lined up to cut it together. By the way, there are a lot of Circuit Associations.
In addition to JPCA there are; KPCA (Korea), CIPC (China), HKPCA (Hong Kong, TPCA (Taiwan), EIPC (Europe), and IPC (no, not ours India), and then of course our IPC which is the largest and most international of them all. Since all these groups are independent, it makes for an interesting dance at events like this.
Vincent Dubois, Co-President of Cogiscan (they have three and don't get me started), was at the show and on his way to China next week. He reports that business is up in general and especially strong in China. Cogiscan specializes in material control using RFID technology, a very fast growing field.
John Macrina and crew from Microscan also dropped by. John is the VP of Sales and Marketing at Microscan, and was formerly Sales Manager at Panasonic US. He was on his way back from China and confirms business is booming again in the land of the red dragon.
Microscan is one of the largest suppliers of sensors and cameras for process control and bar code tracking. Their business is booming and with an energetic guy like John running sales, I don’t see it slowing down.
So I’ll wrap it up for Thursday here at Protec. More tomorrow on the largest booths at the show, and who is introducing new equipment here at Japan’s premiere event.
See JPCA- PROTEC Day 1 on June 3, 2010.
