Reducing Time-to-Market in Component Distribution

Thanks to the RS Pro range, an extract of the main catalogue, which includes practically all types of products sold, RS Components strengthens its role in the distribution of electronic, maintenance and industrial B2B products. The most recent applications include an infra-red ray compact contactless temperature sensor.

di Sergio Soriano

Allowing clients to discover innovative solutions which respond to their technological necessities and helping them to speed up time-to-market. This remains the main goal of RS Components, a top-notch global distributor of electronic, maintenance and industrial products. This aim has been all the more intensely pursued after the introduction of the RS Pro range, the RS private label which includes over 50,000 high quality products and components which allow a wide choice to signers and professionals in a broad range of industries. “We may consider RS Pro as an extract of the RS catalogue which includes practically all type of products”, Marco Barlassina – Commercial Support, RS Components – relates. “From measurement instruments to tools, from protection devices to pneumatic components, right up to all types of connectors, transformers, power supply units, buttons, we intend helping clients to find the most suitable product for their requirements”.

The right synergy between web and “human touch”
The market for RS Components is mainly B2B, therefore strictly industrial. Sales strategies try to trike the best possible balance between the possibilities offered by digital networks and the unquestionable advantages provided by a direct contact with specialists. “Globally, over 60% of sales derive from eCommerce channels – Barlassina continues -. Italy is quite similar: in fact, we can experience an increasingly marked trend which favours purchases through web channels. We can say we have been among the first, in the B2B component trade scenario, to believe in eCommerce, having aunched the first website in the UK in 1997”. All of this has been achieved without neglecting what we could call “human touch”, that is, the relationship between our sales network and our customers. “Being able to listen to the market, with the aim of trying to make proposals one step ahead of the others, remains the most important factor. We act by selecting the manufacturers whom we work with, who must be qualified, and then cooperating actively with them”. Just to provide a few figures, the Electrocomponents Group – which RS Components is part of – operates in 32 countries serving over one million clients worldwide with more than 500,000 products for sale. In 2017 the Group’s returns added up to more than 1.6 billion euro (a 17% increase with respect to the previous year).

Compact infrared temperature sensor
Among the latest applications presented by RS Components there is an innovative temperature detection system, designed by RS and made up exclusively by RS Pro branded products. Using the new contactless infrared sensor and a PID thermoregulator with universal input, temperature may be measured from a distance and, thanks to flashing signals in different colours, a rapid visual response may be obtained (green: low temperature; orange: medium temperature; red: high temperature). The sensor has two outputs which may be used and configured simultaneously, providing a linear excursion output with respect to the temperature detected. The device is also equipped with an open-collector output for temperature alarm with adjustable threshold and hysteresis.