Nineteen balancing specialists and
line sales were trained by Bjarne Andreasen, Hydronic College Manager
from Copenhagen. IMI TA Hydronic Application Sales Managers Bart Decker
and Luciano Belo led hands-on sessions with the Victaulic colleagues,
as did Rafael Mordini, Application Engineer formerly with IMI in Brazil
and recently relocated to the United States to lead the training efforts
at the Hydronic Training Center. The event was hosted by IMI TA North
America management, including new IMI Hydronic Americas President, Ellen
Kobus, and Bhumika Lathia, Sr. Sales, Technical and Marketing Manager.
Lucy Antrobus, Strategy & Projects Analyst, Eysins, Switzerland,
also participated. This mixture of sales and management added for lively
discussions and sharing of ideas. Victaulic sales personnel shared some
best practices with the group, and also provided valuable insights to
their respective markets across the United States and Canada. The IMI
sales team also collected valuable feedback from Victaulic sales as to
needs and wants for products in North America.
Of course the
Hydronic Wall was utilized within some of the training exercises. These
sales partners seemed to internalize the information with hands-on
configurations of TA-Slider, wire connections, and measurement in the
loop and examination of actuator operation. A new Competitive Comparison
Loop recently added to the Hydronic Training Center, was used to
demonstrate differences in not only IMI TA valves to competition, but
different characteristics of globe, ball, gate, and butterfly valve
types. The Roswell Training Center is quickly growing in its utilization
and effectiveness. Case study type reports from successful customer
visits there were noted by several Victaulic balancing specialists,
similar to the jobs won by use of the Engineering Service Center (ESC)
in Budapest. Both centers are proving to be critical to the successful
conversion of various customers to balancing and control methods
pioneered by IMI Hydronic Engineering for North American projects.