FCI-Burndy Products

Source: Manufacturing Digital

Date :11/04/2008 02:19:55

Rodd Ruland, FCI-Burndy Products’ Corporate Vice President and General Manager, explains how the company has leveraged 80 years of experience to keep itself at the forefront of the electrical component & tooling industry

Written by Emmet Cole and Produced by Rob Tuneberg

The pace at which technology is advancing is growing ever more rapidly, and there are numerous strategies and applications that businesses must adopt to keep up with the seemingly endless opportunities opened up by new technologies.

Remaining up-to-date or just ahead of the advancement curve is where many companies seek to be – and the company they turn to is FCI-Burndy Products, the Electrical Division of FCI, a company that provides both individual customers and large-scale businesses with the means to achieve the best connectivity.

Founded in 1924 as Burndy, and now a part of FCI, the Manchester, NH-based company has contributed over eight decades of superior product and working relationships throughout the industry, providing “electrical connectors and application tooling for the electrical market,” says Rodd Ruland, FCI-Burndy Products’ Corporate Vice President and General Manager.

The company’s customer base is wide, and ranges from the large-scale utility providers to contractors and companies that do construction, maintenance, and repair.

“We are one of the only providers that designs, develops, and manufactures both electrical connectors and the installation tooling that goes with them,” Ruland says.

This allows FCI-Burndy Products to go to market with a “system-sell” strategy, guaranteeing the performance of the product when used with its accompanying installation tooling.

At the top of industry

Honing its reputation in the field, along with developing a rapport with clients and adjacent industries, FCI-Burndy goes to market predominantly with “a sales force of factory-direct representatives versus agents and/or manufacturers reps, so we have a very strong presence in the marketplace,” explains Ruland.

To make its presence more widely known in a colorful, attention-grabbing way, FCI-Burndy Products has developed demonstration trucks “which have our application tooling on them in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

“Being able to bring the workshop to the customer scores highly with potential and current clients these days, with schedules loaded and no extra time in our workdays,” says Ruland.

This way, FCI-Burndy Products can go to a construction site or a client’s work site and provide hands-on training and demonstrations - making their products more viable and user-friendly in the process and getting immediate “voice-of-the-customer” input on product enhancements and applications.

FCI-Burndy Products Goes to Market

As part of the fourth largest connector manufacturer in the world, FCI-Burndy Products has a reputation for quality built up over the past 80 years.

Because of its flexibility, the company can use different business models in different countries. In the U.S. , for example, “a high concentration of our sales go through the electrical distribution channel,” explains Ruland, which is governed by the National Association of Electrical Distributors.

The National Association of Electronic Distributors (NAED) has served as the electrical distribution industry’s trade association since 1908, and has developed compliance standards for companies equipped with and measurements to gauge varying degrees of success. The NAED’s protection and service of the electrical distribution channel has allowed companies like FCI-Burndy Products thoroughfares to establish relationships and make their mark in the electrical distribution industry.

For its clients in Canada, Mexico, Latin and South America, the company employs a more hybrid business model, according to Ruland. “A lot of the business is done on a direct basis, where we sell our products directly to a public utility, but we also sell products to the electrical distributor in those countries in support of contractor, telecom, and petro-chemical business,” he says.

This enables FCI-Burndy Products to have time with clients to assess any level of need for assistance in application or understanding the use of their products.

One key area of growth for FCI-Burndy Products is in what Ruland calls the “re-electrification of the U.S.” Ruland believes that just as infrastructure like highways and bridges need to be replaced and updated, the electrical grid needs the same revitalizing touch.

This can be explored through multiple means, says Ruland, but one area of particular focus for FCI-Burndy Products is in the renewable energy area, especially through wind and solar energy solutions.

“As utilities invest more and more in this area, both in the public and private sector, we have the opportunity to leverage our portfolio here as well,” he says. “We’ve focused a lot of our resources on in support of this emerging market and have released several new products that are directed specifically at the wind farm applications.”

Texas is one of the largest wind farm states in the nation, and plays host to The Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center on 47,000 acres in Taylor and Nolan counties. In July 2007, the Texas Public Utility Commission announced its approval for additional transmission lines that could deliver as much as 25,000 megawatts of energy from remote areas to densely-populated urban areas by 2012, according to the State Energy Conservation Office.

The full package

FCI-Burndy Products’s growth during the past two years has been “exceptional,” says Ruland. “We’ve had extremely good growth, more than double-digit growth since 2004 annually.” Fortunately for FCI-Burndy Products, the current global economic trends do not seem to be affecting the unit’s growth or ability to reinvest and expand their portfolio.

Applying the same approach to competition the company has relied on for 80 years, FCI-Burndy Products “will continue to offer value-added services to customers so that it’s not all about price –it’s about the entire package offered,” Ruland explains.

Recognizing the high points of FCI-Burndy’s reputation is easy, given its high employee retention rate - turnover is .07 percent according to Business NH Magazine. Being located in New Hampshire has benefitted the company greatly, although recruiting employees can prove to be difficult in a state whose unemployment rate for the civilian population between 2005 and 2006 was 3.4 percent, the lowest in New England, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For the same group, the national unemployment rate was 4.6 percent.

Relying on its history of providing exceptional customer service, and answering the needs of power, data, and telecommunication, FCI-Burndy Products continues to seek out ways to become more visible in communities in which they have facilities. Its goal is to accommodate their rapid growth by reinvesting and expanding their portfolio to permeate other markets.

Click here to view the corporate brochure on FCI-Burndy Products