Strategic partnership between Sioux Technologies and PAC

‘Our partnership with Sioux is so much more than the traditional relation between client and supplier.’

These words are from Paul Tritman, Vice President Operations of Petroleum Analyzer Company (PAC). ‘As an OEM and service solutions provider, we manufacture, distribute and service products all over the world. We cannot do this alone. In Sioux, we have found a strategic development and manufacturing partner that makes an essential contribution to us realizing our ambitions. We are greatly interwoven and the partnership will only become deeper and broader.’

PAC is a global manufacturer of laboratory and process analysis equipment. The company focuses on the development of solutions for gas chromatography, elementary analysis and the determination of physical properties of hydrocarbons. With these products, they mainly serve the downstream oil and gas industry, including refineries, petrochemical and gas processing plants.

Competitive
‘We aspire to be the market leaders in our niches’, says Tritman. ‘We want to retain that position and expand it. This requires very close ties to our customers: knowing what their current and future needs are and satisfying them as a stable and reliable service provider. PAC is a group of specialized scientific companies. Innovation is our strength: creating and validating innovative applications. We focus on functional quality and the provision of excellent services. We are dependent upon the capabilities of value added service providers like Sioux to help us achieve the lead times, quality and cost-efficiency needed to be competitive with our high-complexity, low-volume, high-mix products. Do what you do best - that is the motto. It serves as the basis for our partnership with Sioux as a strategic development and manufacturing partner.’

Skills and experience
Rene van Wijk, responsible for the assembly activities of Sioux Technologies, has over 15 years of experience in the high-tech industry. During this time, he has seen systems become increasingly complex, while the pressure on development times and the introduction of new products has increased significantly. ‘Within that force field, manufacturing is a competence in and of itself. This requires focus. It also forms the basis for our work for PAC Rotterdam. Their ElemeNtS detects the amount of sulphur and nitrogen in liquid, gaseous materials and LPG samples using ultraviolet fluorescence and chemiluminescence. A second product – M4 –
belongs to the gas chromatography family. We provide all-in-one solutions for both of these: from translating the specifications into the design of electronics, embedded software and mechanical components all the way to assembly and the testing of the machines. During this process we improve the quality, accelerate delivery times and minimize the costs. This would not be possible without relevant expertise, a multidisciplinary approach, the right skills and experience, good facilities and optimum supply chain management. But it starts with a feeling of ownership and the willingness to take on that responsibility.’

Drive
Sioux recently opened a new assembly hall with a 400-square-metre cleanroom and a complete cleaning line. It is close to the company’s headquarters in Eindhoven. The Sioux mechatronics company will soon also relocate to that same business park. By doing so the company is bringing all its software, mathware, electronics and mechanics specialists together at a single campus, increasing its strength even more. Late last year, Tritman visited the company for the first time.

‘It was like a homecoming, not only because of the high-complexity of the products being manufactured but also due to the exceptional professionalism, drive and knowledge of the teams developing our analysers. Our relationship is founded upon trust and mutual respect and this was certainly the case with our management teams. All of this instills confidence. That is when you realize once again how much our companies are interwoven, including our business interests. We surpassed the traditional client-supplier relationship long ago. It speaks for itself that we have direct and difficult discussions sometimes; that is part of the process. But they are held in all openness and generate better results and deepen our trust and respect for each other. Our strategic partnership will therefore only become deeper and broader, for example, in terms of our order portfolio, identifying new market opportunities, developing innovative solutions and cost down opportunities further on in the product life cycle. So we really are in it together for the long run.’