By Joe Feeley, Editor in Chief
Let me call your attention to Sustainable Plant, our new online Putman Media brand (www.sustainableplant.com), which birthed in February.
It's a good fit since all the industries that our Putman brands serve now face global challenges to improve energy efficiencies, have a more sustainable bill of material, and protect employees and surroundings. It's also likely that the companies that develop a commitment to being "greener" also can find green in the shape of more currency in company tills.
Sustainable Plant aims to be all over these important issues with unparalleled coverage.
You've seen an increasing level of coverage about sustainable manufacturing from us. This month, you'll find a report on electric motors (p39), including the ways they're being built to run more efficiently. In addition, RealAnswers (p53) highlights ways to capture and use meaningful energy consumption data via the machine HMI.
More than ever, we look for information relevant to machine builders that find themselves responding to customer requests to squeeze more efficiencies from machines through higher performance, smaller footprints, and lower energy consumption. There's a lot more to it than premium efficiency motors. A commitment to sustainability is a vitally important element for becoming a smart, responsible manufacturer.
Sustainable Plant will be an excellent complement to our coverage and will keep you in touch with forces outside your spheres of operation that might soon influence you and your customers' market.
Speaking of our coverage, response to a question in this year's Product Research and Buying Habits study, the results of which start on p22, got my attention. The study group was asked to name the most-useful non-vendor website they've found for doing product research. The results were an entirely inconclusive scattering of individual sites, and most responders just pointed to Google, though that's not what we were after.
But one response was, "How is anything considered a non-vendor site when essentially vendor ads pay for all these sites?" Another: "I have not found one. No automation or control magazine would dare talk badly about a potential ad revenue generator or face legal battles."
I'm likely being overly sensitive, but that bothered me. I leaped to an unsubstantiated conclusion that those might be aimed at us.
Two points about this: The voice of this brand is the automation user, not the supplier. You'll not find more user-based content anywhere. We're the only brand in our space that flat out doesn't print vendor-bylined articles. I take heat for that pretty regularly. Our body of work I think indicates our zeal to bring you a real, unfiltered voice of the user.
If you don't see it that way, please tell me what I'm missing.
There. I feel a little better now.
