The Motion Control Association (MCA), the global trade group representing the motion control industry, announced that it has reached a milestone of surpassing 100 member companies. This reflects a strong momentum of recent growth for the association that was founded in late 2006 with just a handful of leading motion control industry suppliers. Members now include manufacturers of motion control components and systems, distributors, system integrators, consulting firms, and research groups directly involved with mechanical and electronic (mechatronics) motion control all around the world.
According to MCA, this new foundation of member companies will enable them to round out the services they currently provide to the industry and add more to the offering as well. “One of our most sought after member benefits is our quarterly market statistics reports, which all members receive. As we increase our membership and participation in this trusted data collection program, the statistics reports get better and the analysis can be detailed in new and useful ways,” explained Dana Whalls, MCA’s vice president. “We’ll continue building on our successful webinar series – bringing useful education right to people’s desktops and we plan to increase our educational outreach by developing a training and certification program on basic motion control technologies. We’ll also invest in our industry portal website (www.motioncontrolonline.org) which provides great articles, news, company profiles and products. We’ll enhance the site with more video and social media elements and useful member tools within the site,” added Ms. Whalls.
MCA is governed by a Board of Directors made up of key industry professionals. John Hegel, CEO of American Control Electronics is the current Chairman of the Board and has been active in the membership building efforts of MCA. “In 2013 alone we’ve had a 40% increase in our membership and we see that as the tipping point for continued rapid growth of the association,” said John Hegel. The popular members-only MCA Business Conference, which is held in January each year, continues to drive membership increases. “Most associations offer annual meetings featuring high-quality speakers, and MCA does as well. The MCA difference is two-fold; first, most of our attendees are owners, presidents or vice-presidents of their organizations. They are the key decision makers from our member companies, the folks that make things happen and are often hard to find at other events. And second, we co-locate with our two sister associations, the Robotic Industries Association (RIA) and AIA – the global trade group for vision and imaging. Attendees are able to network and do business with the leaders in robotics and vision, two industries that drive many technological advances. Our members find this a highly tangible benefit and just one of many solid reasons to join MCA. The upcoming conference already has 400 pre-registered attendees and that number will grow,” explained Mr. Hegel.
MCA, along with the entire A3 group, produce the bi-annual trade show called Automate. This broad automation technologies show will next be held March 23-26, 2015 at McCormick Place in Chicago, Illinois. The growth in MCA is reflected in the exhibitor base for the 2015 show, with motion control technology companies already exceeding the exhibit space from 2013 and the show is still a year and a half away.
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