Luring Attendees in to Booths isa Challenge At a Large Show Like National Manufacturing Week.Luring Attendees in to Booths isa Challenge At a Large Show Like National Manufacturing Week.

With tires rising to nearly eye level, Bigfoot is hard to miss. The Ford truck is known for jumping and climbing over anything in its path, but its driver touts its speed. "I can go from zero to 80 in four seconds," he says, noting that a 572 cubic inch engine provides 1,600 horsepower.

Bigfoot sits in the Lawson Products booth, which also include subsidiaries Drummond American and Cronatron Welding. The companies have a broad range of products, including hoses and fasteners, hydraulics and pneumatics, welding equipment and supplies along with specialty chemicals and maintenance services. The three companies offer inventory control services to augment their broad product lines. The NASCAR racer in the Sprint booth is also attracting plenty of attention, particularly when Robbie Gordon showed up to sign autographs. Sprint also demonstrated its Fanview, a handheld module that uses Sprint's wireless technologies to bring fans closer to the drivers, providing real time video and audio from the racer as well as data. Sprint provides a number of wireless technologies for manufacturing plants. The company will install networks that assure coverage in every corner of a large facility or campus, eliminating the dead spots that can otherwise occur. The Sprint-Nextel phones provide walkie talkie links for the factory, while giving personnel the ability to contact suppliers or other facilities using cell phones. The networks also support Blackberries and other handheld computers. Handhelds can also be tied to bar code readers, giving personnel a way to track data anywhere around the enterprise.

http://www.lawsonproducts.com
http://webapp1.drummondamerican.com/drummond/homePage
http://www.nextel.com/en/solutions/manufacturing.shtml
http://webapp1.cronatronwelding.com/cronatron/homePage
http://www.bigfoot4x4.com
http://www.nascar.com/