Fall has fallen upon us. The kids are back in school and offices around the country have returned from their ghost town statuses caused by summer vacation.  

If you ever work with European customers you are accustom to 4-12 weeks of entire businesses being shut down for vacation. The idea seems so foreign to many US workers but should it? Try working on a development with any company over the summer months and a total company vacation doesn't seem like such a bad idea. In the US we make sure we stage our vacations so we always have "coverage" but it's a bit of a farce. The project is inevitably delayed multiple weeks as multiple people, with multiple solely held talents and secrets, take multiple vacations over multiple summer months. In the end one total delay may actually be better. But I digress.

The point is business is back in full swing and Manufacturing numbers are up. There may be more uncertainty than ever caused by your pick of Politics, Media, or Crazies but our industry is kicking. We have our first compact car manufacturing line and tire production facility being built in the US since they left our shores in the 70's! Why? Because of Automation. Want to make cheap off shore labor irrelevant in a competitive market, eliminate the labor and create a process that produces higher quality results?  That's what automation people do. We make production faster, cheaper and more reliable.

At RTA we hope this is a trend that continues. We are doing our best to give the System Integrators and Machine Builders behind manufacturing operations the tools to be successful. In 2012 we will be releasing major upgrades to our line of gateways, which you've made a huge success. We are taking that success along with your input and suggestion to make them even better. 

Here's to working together for continued success. 

RTA News Team

· What activity stops all of your body's functions, including your heart?

· What is the only insect that can turn its head?

·On average, how many people are air born over the US at any given hour?

· What percentage of office workers stopped on the street for a survey agreed to give up their computer passwords in exchange for a chocolate bar?

Answers located on bottom of page..

I wish I could tell you that RTA is a product of enormous market research, exhaustive financial analysis and thorough examination of potential products and services.

I’ve gilded the lily on many occasions but I couldn’t tell a lie that big.

Truth is that the company you see and people you talk to and most everything about us is an accident.

In the old days, pre-RTA, I bopped around at a number of Automation companies. I did time (yeah it felt like that) at Proctor & Gamble in the Automation Services department. I spent much more time at Kimberly-Clark in their Feminine Care department. And then I spent several unproductive years at Allen-Bradley in the pre-Rockwell times.

That was a formative experience for me. In my department we were losing over a million dollars a month. For some reason, I was the only one concerned. I used to get these strange looks when I suggested that bad things might happen if we continue to lose a million dollars every month. Not a lot of money for a 4 billion dollar company I was told. Oddly at salary adjustment time, a raise of few thousand dollars was a massive amount of money but I digress.

So I left to be “in control” of my life. Eventually someone higher up found the leak and plugged it by killing the department. My one and only time exhibiting any kind of prescience.

So RTA was born. What kind of company was it to be? Well I had a few rules to live by:

1. If you bring in donuts when I’m in the office you get laid off. I have little to no self control.

2.   There are no hours. I’m not keeping track. Work whenever you need to so that the projects are done on time and customers are happy. Sometimes you’ll work 80 hours, sometimes 25 or 30.

3.   Answer the phone. Live person.

4.   We’re all done with school. Now is the time to hit the books and get educated. You’ll get paid by what you know and how you use that knowledge to deliver more value to our customers. You get paid more this year for delivering more value than last year. Works for the company and it works for you.

5.   Have fun. Make the place an enjoyable place to be. This is the part that most people forget. If you’re going to spend a majority of your life someplace it should be a place you enjoy. We grill out every Friday. We have company baseball games and fantasy football. Pool table will be in pretty soon.

6.   And most important – SIMPLICITY! Automation stuff is too darn complex. Simple products that are simple to understand, fast to deploy and easy to operate.

There’s a few more but that’s the basic rules from the day that we hired our first employee until now.

That last one is the reason for our success. All of you reading this are the judges of how well we accomplish that last one. None of you have the time or inclination to spend hours to understand and program a converter. You just want to move the data from here over to there.

Given our continuous upward trend on sales and units shipped it looks like you’ve judged us to be a success.

We plan on continuing that successful path but if we don’t, if we fail to give you a product that saves you time and money, you let me know. Right  away. And I’ll get it fixed.

And that’s my promise to you.