For National Product Manager Dave Anderson, helping find a solution to a customer’s operational or production-related challenges comes with the territory.
And it’s a wide territory: the scope of his role in industrial instrumentation spans the U.S. and all three of SICK’s major sectors of factory, logistics and process automation.
“I’m a person who likes to help people solve their problems. That’s what energizes and motivates me. I’m interested in what a customer’s biggest challenges are and how we can solve them on a solutions level,” Dave says. It’s also a plus he enjoys working with people “whether inside or outside of SICK.”
When not at the SICK offices in Bloomington, Minn., Dave is on the road regularly visiting customers in industries that range from industrial mining and power plants to consumer products, or at SICK HQ in Germany.
Dave draws on previous technical roles serving the chemical and energy industries, among others. Much of his current work is involved with customers’ fluid applications. These applications tend to occur upstream in an industrial plant where raw materials are being processed. This often requires measuring level, flow, pressure and temperature. “The majority of applications I come across can be optimized by using SICK industrial instrumentation products. For example, common applications for these products are measuring liquids in industrial storage tanks or monitoring paint mixing for an automotive assembly line,” he says.
One case of Dave’s troubleshooting efforts is seen in an absorbent bulk product causing safety concerns because of uneven density when bags of finished product are stacked on pallets. So Dave devised a test, currently underway on the customer’s production line, using a SICK Bulkscan® LMS511 LiDAR sensor to measure the density of the product following the drying process. If successful, the application will allow the customer to take the appropriate steps to ensure the dried-product density falls within set tolerances to yield a more even weight distribution of the product when packed in bags.
Dave will celebrate his two-year anniversary with SICK in March 2018, when he will also move to a new role as National Distribution and Integrator Program Manager. “I look forward to expanding my role within the company, but will continue to focus on providing an amazing customer experience for both our customers and my sales channel partners,” he says.
A Minnesota native, Dave is a biomedical engineering grad from the University of Minnesota and also holds that university’s M.S. in Management of Technology, also known as a technical MBA.
Married with two boys ages 3 and 5, Dave has served as a volunteer firefighter for the City of Chaska for the last 10 years. With a love of the outdoors, he’s a “sports guy.” He’s a proud baseball player on a “town team” representing the nearby community of Union Hill.
