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The 2011 RCA Goes to...

Aug. 1, 2011
The Votes for the RCA Have Been Tallied, and the Winners Have Been Determined. But to Find Out Who Won, You'll have to Read Our September 2011 Edition
By Katherine Bonfante, Managing Editor, Digital Media

For the past months we've been asking our machine-builder and system-integrator readers to vote in our 2011 Readers' Choice Awards. Our voting period is now closed, and if you didn't participate in our cyber election, you missed your annual chance to tell us who you specify, recommend or from whom you buy industrial automation and control products.

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If so, not only did you forget to voice your opinion and honor those suppliers who provide you with outstanding service all year long, but you also gave up the chance to win an iPad or gift certificate from Amazon.com, Home Depot or Lowe's.

We first solicited readers' opinions for the annual RCA in 2001, the results of which you can read in our article, "Performance Tested, Reader Approved" at www.ControlDesign.com/RCA01. Among the 43 categories that we listed in our first RCA ballot, 27 produced clear-cut winners with margins of 10% or greater over those in second place.

In 2001, Hoffman dominated the polling by receiving 76% of all collected votes. Receiving the highest score for service and support merit (with 4.8 out of 5) were AutomationDirect for the software, PLC programming category; and Yaskawa for the software, motion control category.

Last year's RCA ballot listed 51 product categories, and our readers registered 87 individual companies to rank.

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The highest service and support recognition of 2010 scored 4.4 points out of 5, and the honor went again to AutomationDirect, this time in the operator terminal category, and also to Precision Digital in the panel meter category.

To find out more about our 2010 RCA winners, read our article "Steps Above the Rest" at www.ControlDesign.com/RCA10.

This year, the votes for the RCA have been tallied, and the winners have been determined. I wish I could tell you who won in all of our categories, but I can't say a word. Not yet. You can find that information, as well as the service and support leaders, in our September 2011 edition, when the results are made public.

We have also chosen our lucky iPad and gift certificate recipients. This was done in a blind lottery, picking names from those who participated by voting. But guess what—I can't tell you that yet either. Just wait until next month.

In the meantime, you can read all about our winners from the past 10 years by visiting www.ControlDesign.com/RCA-all, or simply by scanning the QR code on page 7 (August 2011, edition).

If you participated in this year's vote, you might even be able to read next month's 2011 RCA results by scanning the QR code on that same page with your brand new iPad. Either way, come back next month to read all the results for the 2011 Readers' Choice Awards.