Customers Pick the Top Ten Best Performers

Bishop & Associates just completed the 2014 Customer Survey of the Connector Industry asking connector users to evaluate 46 connector manufacturers. A total of 455 users answered 20 questions relating to important issues such as quality, pricing, delivery, lead times, technical support, etc.

The distribution of responses by job function and sales channel is shown in the following table:

Distribution of Responses
By Job Function and Sales Channel

Note, 43% of participants were engineers and 46% were OEMs.

The Top Ten Overall Best Performers

The top ten companies that received the highest customer evaluations are shown in the following table. 

The Top 10 performers include five U.S. companies and five German companies. Samtec was ranked #1 for the third consecutive year.

The following table shows how the 2014 Top Ten ranked in the past five surveys conducted. 

Of particular note:

Samtec was ranked #1 best performer in four of the past five surveys. Kycon is a strong #2.

HARTING has steadily improved performance since a poor ranking in 2009. Now the company has ranked in the Top Ten in the past two surveys, and recorded a strong #3 rank in 2014.

Phoenix Contact clearly has demonstrated its ability to serve customers by a Top Ten rank in all the surveys.

3M Electronics dropped out of the Top Ten only once in the past five surveys.

Molex consistently has a Top Ten rank. Further, Molex is the only company that ranks in both the Top Ten for largest connector companies and Top Ten Best Performers.

Weidmueller has achieved Top Ten status in the last two surveys.

Further articles will identify best performers in areas such as quality, delivery, price, etc.