Fastenal expo to have more training for MRO buyers
By Susan Avery -- Purchasing, 3/1/2007 7:00:00 AM
The fifth—and largest ever—Fastenal Industrial and Construction Expo will be held on April 3–5 in Nashville, Tenn., and is expected to feature more training geared specifically toward its customers, many of whom are MRO purchasing professionals.
While this year's expo still will provide product training conducted by Fastenal's manufacturer suppliers, it also will include more sessions on operations covering supply chain management, lean manufacturing, global sourcing and managing total cost of ownership (TCO), topics customers told the distributor they wanted on the agenda. Leading a session will be Tim Underhill, president of Strategic Business Solutions, an industry consultant who works with both purchasing professionals and industrial distributors and does extensive work on TCO.
At the expo, there also will be sessions on use of personal protective equipment, another topic that customers requested.
Also new this year: The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) will provide continuing education credits for purchasing professionals who attend the training sessions and are pursuing CPM recertification.
"Our expectation for this year's expo is to bring in more customers and to teach them more about Fastenal and our capabilities," says Will Oberton, CEO and president. "It's a tremendous opportunity for us, when customers give us a day or two of their undivided attention. One of our biggest challenges as an organization is to help our customers better understand what we do."
To that end, the expo provides Fastenal customers with opportunity to meet with the distributor's personnel and its suppliers to learn more about new products. There will be about 200 manufacturer suppliers on hand providing information on such diverse product categories as janitorial supplies, paints and chemicals, hydraulics/pneumatics/power transmission products, electrical supplies, material handling products, air and hand tools and abrasives. Purchasing also will have a booth at this year's expo.
More than 3,500 Fastenal customers attended the expo in 2006 which was held in Minneapolis.
Based in Winona, Minn., Fastenal is a full line distributor selling approximately 515,000 types of industrial supplies. Annual sales for 2006 were $1.8 billion. Last year, Fastenal opened 245 stores bringing the total number of locations in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Singapore and The Netherlands to 2000, and it's enhancing many existing facilities through its CSP2 (Customer Service Project), which includes such improvements as inventory selection, merchandising and, in some cases, store locations.
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