Rockwell Automation in Singapore won a Silver Stevie Award in the Company of the Year Awards categories of the 2014 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards. (The 2015 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards will begin accepting entries this September from organizations through throughout the 22 nations of the Asia-Pacific region. Get your entry kit here.)
Rockwell Automation (RA) is the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and information. Its Asia Pacific Business Center (APBC) in Singapore serves as the company’s global development headquarters
We asked Co Gia Nguyen, APBC’s Vice President & General Manager, what winning a Silver Stevie at the 2014 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards had meant to him and his team.
“Winning this award is a testament to the effectiveness of the Rockwell Production System. This allows our leaders and employees to work together efficiently, achieving process and production excellence in our manufacturing facilities to better fulfill our customers’ needs,” he told us. “It also serves as a well-earned recognition and appreciation of our team of research and development, engineering, and manufacturing experts at APBC.”
Delivering Results
The business center was established in November 2005. Currently over 600 employees work at APBC on the following RA automation-control product lines: CompactLogix™; SLC™; Distributed Input/Output; Micro Controllers; PanelView™ Component; and Component Drives.
Nguyen praised the hard work of his team. “The team has worked tirelessly and enthusiastically to help the company leverage its end-to-end integrated supply-chain-management process,” he told us. “This award acknowledges Rockwell Automation’s ability to deliver innovative products that command customer loyalty and drive actions, results, and accountability for a competitive edge.”
Positive Brand Awareness
In addition, Rockwell Automation wrote and distributed a press release announcing their win. Nguyen told us that it received “significant coverage in many of the top-tier industry publications across Asia—driving positive brand awareness among our target audience.”
Continued Nguyen: “The Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards have provided a platform for good exposure for Rockwell Automation’s brand—not only with the panel of judges and other Stevie Awards winners, but also among our partners and customers, thanks to the media coverage we gleaned through the prestige attached to the awards in the U.S. We believe that by building more brand awareness of the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the competition’s clout in this region will grow incrementally, adding greater benefit to companies in this region.”
Looking to the Future
The APBC’s research and development, engineering, and manufacturing experts are conveniently located near machine builders in Asia-Pacific, a market vital to RA’s growth.
We asked Nguyen what new technologies he thought would most affect his customers in the future.
"Rockwell Automation’s vision is to leverage technology to transcend industrial business barriers and add value to the connected enterprise, as well as to the industrial ecosystem," he told us. “New commercial technologies will seamlessly connect people, processes, devices, and data so industrial operations can be integrated, optimized, collaborative, sustainable, and secure.
“The evolution of a smart, Internet-enabled architecture that transforms data into practical knowledge will lead to sustainable competitive differentiation with enhanced plants and supply networks.”
Improved Operations
Nguyen explained that, in a connected enterprise, plant personnel could capitalize on the business value of possessing the right information at the right time with visibility into production data and supply-chain information.
“The convergence of new technologies that securely connect plant information with enterprise IT systems results in greater productivity, better utilization of assets, and improved decision making,” he added. “By bridging the gap between production and enterprise networks, Rockwell Automation shows how the connected enterprise enjoys intuitive and improved operations, as well as a lower total cost of ownership.”
A More Secure Environment
Nguyen noted that as the historical disconnect between enterprise and production networks is bridged, manufacturers, producers, and utilities will need to understand potential security risks and best practices for developing a more secure environment. As he put it: “Rockwell Automation helps companies protect their industrial control and information systems with effective security strategies.”
Sustainability
With more industrial firms seeking sustainability, automated real-time reporting and monitoring allows on-demand viewing of data that can be transformed into actionable information. “With an eye on energy savings, Rockwell Automation can help operations managers and business leaders design, monitor, and control their energy usage,” concludes Nguyen.
About Co Gia Nguyen
Co Nguyen is Vice President and General Manager of the Rockwell Automation (RA) Asia Pacific Business Center. He is the head of this legal entity located in Singapore and is responsible for its profit/loss and for managing all relationships and interactions with the Singapore government and other related agencies.
Nguyen joined Rockwell Automation in October 2007. Prior to accepting his current position in October 2010, he was the Business Director responsible for the Distributed Input/Output and Small Controller businesses located in Singapore.
Nguyen has had extensive general management, product development, operations, and account management experiences and has worked for multi-national companies such as Johnson Electric, Honeywell, General Electric, AVX Tantalum and ITT Cannon. Nguyen also had strong multi-cultural experiences having lived and worked in the United States, Brazil, and Hong Kong.
Nguyen received his Bachelor of Science, majoring in Mechanical Engineering, from the United States Military Academy at West Point.
About Rockwell Automation
Rockwell Automation, Inc. (NYSE: ROK), the world’s largest company dedicated to industrial automation and information, makes its customers more productive and the world more sustainable. Headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Rockwell Automation employs about 22,000 people serving customers in more than 80 countries.
