Food Fortune: Engineer Kim Tran still waits tables.
Great ideas can come from any source and any place. For Baldor, they often come during a weekly lunch at the Diamond Head Chinese Restaurant in Fort Smith, AR. Every Monday, while passing the egg rolls and steamed fish, the company's top executives chew on a PuPu Platter of ideas for new products and different marketing strategies. The latest idea: rebates to end users and distributors who buy Baldor's Premium Efficiency Motors in sizes of 20 hp and above. The rebates are in the form of $1.00 per horsepower. Marketing Vice President Randy Breaux hopes the program will bring about a 10-15% increase in sales of the motors and drives. But it's not just ideas cooking at the Diamond Head. Recently, as the Baldor group assembled at their usual table, the waitress asked them what they wanted and Chairman Rollie Boreham said, "an electrical engineer." To which, the waitress responded, "Great, I'm one." Not long after, she became a Baldor employee. But she didn't give up her waitressing. She's married to the restaurant's owner, so every day at noon, she is back at the Diamond Head taking lunch orders for an hour before resuming her engineering work at Baldor's Drive Center.
JUNE 26TH WEBCAST: Collaborative Requirements Engineering
Speed your innovation. Capture the "voice of the customer" and translate customer requests into user requirements that define new products. Find out why the new ENOVIA Requirements Management solution enables organizations to improve their overall global requirements management process. Read More
Mechatronics in action
Successful synergistic integration of controls, electronics, computers and mechanical systems is key to the 21st century design process. Unlock the secrets at the Mechatronics Zone!
Webcast: Sensor Know-How Now
Join our moderator Randy Frank and John Keating from Cognex and explore Solving Industrial Inspection Problems. Read More
Engineering Concept Conduit
Engineering Concept Conduit looks at new products and the components that make them exceptional. Each month we’ll look at a new electronic product and see what makes it tick from an engineering point of view. We’ll explore the design and engineering challenges for the product and examine the components that solved those challenges.
Light Matters: Systems Level Approach to HBLED illumination applications
Its good practice to apply a systems-level approach to high-brightness LED (HBLED) illumination applications. Minimally, the system includes the optical, thermal and electrical characteristics of the of the HBLED, the lens (if any) which is built-in to its package, secondary optics such as external plastic lenses/reflectors to direct the light as your application requires and power driver electronics. Read More