Kitagawa-NorthTech Names New VP

Kitagawa-NorthTech, Inc. (Schaumburg, IL) has named Kevin Bennett as their vice president of sales and marketing. In his new position, Bennett is spearheading sales and marketing endeavors for North America and is involved with the operational aspects associated with how the company brings new workholding products and services to the market, responding to customer needs and enhancing the customer experience.

Prior to his promotion, Bennett most recently served as the their national sales and marketing manager. He has been an employee at the company for over seven years and began his employment with them as a regional sales manager. “Kevin has been an invaluable asset to the company as the scope of his involvement has far exceeded the sales and marketing function,” said company’s president Ken Suzuki. “He has been extensively involved with operations, engineering, manufacturing, customer service and repair and service. We look forward to expanding our business and improving our position in North America. We welcome him to our leadership team and will fully support him to help accomplish these very important pursuits.”

“We will carry this company into the future with new products, solutions and services for our customers,” added Bennett. “New products and services such as our Digital Grip Force Analyzer Software, Integral Steady Rests, Turnkey Steady Rest Integration Services, Custom Engineering and Workholding Services are some recent examples of this effort and our commitment.”

Prior to joining the company, Bennett served as the North East/Mid-Atlantic regional manager for SMW AutoBlok, where he re-established their dealer and distributor network, enhancing the sale of engineered productivity based workholding solutions and value-added services. His experience with industrial supply chain and distribution channel management came from Turtle and Hughes Industrial Supply, where he was responsible for securing vendor-managed inventories at larger manufacturing companies throughout New England. Previously, he held the position of senior sales for Southwestern Industries, Bennett previously worked in specialized tool room services responsible for building remote robotics aimed at nuclear field services applications with Westinghouse (F.K.A. Combustion Engineering).

His career began at Hamilton Sundstrand Division of UTAS (F.K.A. Hamilton Standard, a Division of United Technologies Corporation), where he became a journeyman tool maker. He has a degree in computer science, is a CPM and holds many other certifications. Bennett is an active member of the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), Association for Manufacturing Technology (AMT) and Association for Machine Tool Distributors (AMTDA). He operates out of the company’s North American corporate manufacturing and repair and services headquarters in Schaumburg.

www.kitagawa.com