Respondents Rate Vendor Satisfaction

Vendor rankings on these pages—across categories included in this year’s survey—are based on overall satisfaction with a product and/or manufacturer rated by respondents. Product/manufacturer overall satisfaction is derived from response to survey questions dealing with: ease of installation and setup, quality of documentation and factory calibration, product availability and performance, price and value for the dollar, product upgrades and legacy system support, vendor Web site resources usefulness, and understanding of customer needs. Also considered in this section’s rating is likeliness to purchase from that vendor again, and willingness to support continued purchases from that vendor in opposition to corporate wishes to purchase from a different manufacturer.

To adjust for vendors with lower response levels and high ratings from outranking vendors with similarly high ratings but even higher response levels, total responses for each vendor were multiplied by the vendor’s weighted score. The result enables us to rank the top vendors—in terms of customer satisfaction—for each category.

Only those companies with weighted averages higher than or equal to the category’s weighted average are included in these listings.

The numbers in parentheses following the category names are the weighted average score for the category as a whole. Vendors’ weighted scores appear directly after their name. The bracketed number—used to determine ranking order—is the result of the calculation multiplying the total responses for a particular vendor by the vendor’s weighted score.

AC Adjustable Speed Drives (77.45)

Rockwell Automation 78.92 [10,890]ABB 78.90 [3629]Magnatek (Yaskawa) 82.27 [2,879]Toshiba 79.90 [1,358]AC Tech 78.50 [1,099]Eaton/Cutler-Hammer 80.22 [722]

AC Motors (82.22)

Baldor Electric 82.23 [5,016]Dayton 86.30 [1,726]Marathon Electric 89.20 [1,338]US Motors 82.75 [993]Leeson Electric 84.99 [680]Toshiba 83.23 [583]Siemens 82.58 [495]

Block (on/off) Valves and Actuators (81.21)

Asco (Emerson Process) 82.93 [332]Swagelok 81.61 [652]Apollo 84.51 [592]MAC Valves 83.94 [504]Numatics 91.00 [455]Anderson-Greenwood 82.93 [332]

Control Valves (throttling) and Actuators (81.09)

Fisher (Emerson Process) 84.15 [7405]Masoneilan 84.20 [1095]SMC 81.21 [568]

Distributed and/or Hybrid Control Systems Hardware & Software (71.78)

Emerson Process Management 74.93 [3,072]ABB 72.38 [1,665]Rockwell Automation 73.67 [1,252]Yokogawa 85.14 [341]Schneider Electric 76.35 [229]

I/O Products & Systems (79.65)

Rockwell Automation 82.48 [4,866]Phoenix Contact 83.95 [1,595]Opto22 86.05 [1,033]Schneider Electric 83.59 [1,003]Acromag 87.84 [351]

Motion Controller and/or Positioner Hardware and Software (74.82)

Rockwell Automation 76.96 [2,155]Bosch Rexroth (Indramat) 80.47 [1,127]Omron Electronics 75.83 [682]Siemens 81.46 [570]Yokogawa 82.00 [410]Baldor Electric 77.27 [386]

Operator Interface Hardware and HMI/SCADA Software (75.32)

Invensys Wonderware 77.98 [3,197]Dell 83.61 [1,171]AutomationDirect 85.87 [687]Mitsubishi Electric 88.41 [619]Citect 89.23 [535]National Instruments 87.77 [439]Advantech 79.62 [239]

PC-based Control Software (78.22)

National Instruments 82.46 [3,133]GE Fanuc 79.15 [950]Siemens 79.26 [713]The Mathworks 81.13 [568]Emerson Process Management 86.73 [347]Invensys Wonderware 80.00 [320]

Photoelectric & Proximity Sensors (85.69)

Turck 87.55 [2,364]Keyence 89.14 [2,229]ifm Efector 91.61 [1008]

Programmable Logic Controllers Hardware & Software (79.86)

Rockwell Automation 81.90 [29,729]AutomationDirect 86.16 [3,877]Omron Electronics 80.49 [2,254]

Process Analysis & Loop-Tuning Software (79.76)

National Instruments 87.93 [352]Rockwell Automation 81.54 [245]

Sensors and/or Transmitters (81.63)

Emerson Process Management 85.38 [6,916]Yokogawa 87.45 [1,049]

Solid-state Motor Starters (75.98)

Rockwell Automation 83.73 [419]Eaton/Cutler-Hammer 77.04 [385]

Valve Positioners (80.87)

Emerson Process Management 85.72 [1,029]Metso Automation 87.16 [348]Valtek 85.38 [256]

Vision System Software & Hardware (74.43)

Cognex (DVT) 78.48 [2,904]National Instruments 76.38 [687]Sony 77.31 [232]

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