SPRING 2017

10
THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK
Bengt Blendulf
Bengt Blendulf was educated in Sweden and moved to the US in 1974 to start a subsidiary for a Swedish fastener
manufacturer. After working as a technical consultant on the faculty of the College of Engineering and Science at
Clemson University, he established EduPro US in 1997 to teach highly rated courses in Fastening Technology in the US,
Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Being one of the founders, Bengt served as the chairman of ASTM F16.96 Bolting
Technology from 1996 to 2006. In 2006 he received the Fred F. Weingruber award from ASTM for “his efforts to promote
and develop standards for the fastener industry.” In 2013 he also received IFI’s Soaring Eagle Award for “significant
contributions to the technological advancement of the fastener industry”. Bengt is the author of an extensive lecture book,
well over 110 articles and “Mechanical Fastening and Joining”, a book published in 2013 by the Industrial Fasteners
Institute. He can be contacted through www.edupro.us or by email bblendulf@yahoo.com.
TECHNICAL KNOWLEDGE AND TRAINING
This is a topic that we have touched on over the
past decades in the Link Magazine. From my standpoint
it is as important to the fastener distributor as good
prices, inventories, shipping efficiency, product quality
and many other issues related to the products. But it is
oftentimes put on the back-burner for various reasons,
mainly time and cost. Let us just re-visit the old saying
“if you think that knowledge is expensive – try ignorance”
before continuing.
Judging from the participation at the Fastener Show
in Las Vegas and my training classes there, it seems
to be a small but steady interest in technical training of
distributor personnel. Those classes are organized by
the Fastener Training Institute, FTI, and they are doing
a pretty good job of bringing students to the annual Las
Vegas event. However, the typical 25-30 participants are
a “drop in the bucket” considering the size of the US
distribution market. It is, of course, cost effective to add
the training to the expense of sending people to the Las
Vegas show, but the total training need is much larger.
What is a good training curriculum for distributor
personnel? Let’s start with the assumption that most
people working at distributors are not graduate engineers.
But they are selling products that are often used in highly
engineered equipment requiring quality and precise
measurements. Distributor people are often technically
CONTRIBUTOR ARTICLE
challenged by having to respond to questions about a
wide variety of issues related to fastener quality and
performance. How well are they prepared for answering
those technical questions properly? Or do they pass
on it and have somebody else (with real knowledge) to
respond or to take a guess? We have to keep in mind
that the person in the industry asking for or using the
fasteners may not have the technical know-how either.
Too often, the industrial customer is also a victim
of sub-standard education from their education provider
(university, technical college, etc.). Just because the
specifier is called an engineer does not necessarily mean
that they know the best way of using the fastener they
are asking for. I am not suggesting that the distributor
should always second-guess the fastener choices made
by the industrial customer, but it may be a good idea to,
at least, keep an open eye on the specification.
First of all, the distributor should always keep its
own sales catalogues up-to-date. It is sad to see how
many of the current distributor catalogues are severely
obsolete, particularly when they are specifying metric
fasteners. For example, the references to DIN are
often much too late since the Germans did make them
obsolete in the 1990’s. One has to wonder why the US
distributors are keeping obsolete DIN standards in their
catalogues.
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