Slash Costs & Supercharge Efficiency: Team Up with This Electronic Parts Distributor

This article is sponsored by Marsh Electronics, a Milwaukee-based electronics product distributor that offers custom cable and wire harness assembly capabilities, logistics solutions, and more.

To address rising overhead costs and a lack of skilled labor, manufacturers are increasingly relying on their distributors to fulfill production needs. That's where electronics distributors like Marsh Electronics come in, offering a selection of value-added services on top of part sourcing.

?°We work with customers to understand their pain points and the problems they?ˉre trying to solve,” says Jim Banovich, CEO and president of Marsh Electronics.“Then we come up with a unique solution, whether it's with a standard product or something that has to be designed and configured specifically for them.”

Instead of competing directly with its larger counterparts, Marsh Electronics takes a customer-focused, solutions-oriented approach that has worked well for them. As a distributor, the company builds inventory based on the specific needs of customers and their production processes.

?°We don?ˉt have multiple customers per SKU?amost parts are unique to each customer,” says Jackie Roschmann, marketing manager at Marsh Electronics.“This philosophy has been successful in attracting and maintaining clients as the industry evolves.”?

Furthermore, Marsh offers a range of custom assembly services, inventory replenishment programs, and logistics solutions through its MarVac Assemblies division. Thomas Insights sat down with Banovich and Roschmann to learn more about the business and how they?ˉre staying ahead of industry trends.

Thomas Insights (TI): What sets Marsh Electronics apart from other electronic component distributors?

Jim Banovich (JB): It's the uniqueness of how we go to market. We have some very large, billion-dollar competitors that are globally focused. They mainly supply high-volume, commodity-type passive components like interconnects and semiconductors to Tier One customers.

As a smaller, more flexible company, Marsh Electronics works with Tier Two and Tier Three customers. We don?ˉt stock high-volume, commodity-type products that go on a printed circuit board. Rather, our inventory is built up specifically for our customers and the products we design with them, meaning they?ˉre often customized parts rather than standard, off-the-shelf ones. We then build our inventory to support their production processes.

While our larger competitors will do this, they don?ˉt want to hold inventory for a long time. At Marsh, we have a lot of products that are termed "non-cancelable, non-returnable,” which means they?ˉre specialized and unique to each customer. By building tailored inventory replenishment programs for our customers?ˉ specialized products, we?ˉve been able to fill a gap in the industry for many years now.

TI: How does your MarVac Assemblies division support customers beyond component sourcing?

JB: In our Marvac Assemblies division, we take these specialized products and build custom assemblies for our customers?ˉ prints, putting them into a wire harness, a cable harness, or a sub-panel assembly. Depending on their needs, we can provide a more or less finished subassembly of their end product. In this way, we?ˉre an integral part of our customers?ˉ operations and work together to support one another.

TI: Why is it important to work with an authorized distributor like Marsh Electronics?

JB: One thing we all have in common in this industry is our dedication to authorized sourcing. This means we have contractual agreements with our suppliers, and we?ˉre authorized to sell their products. We can tell customers that they are getting certified, legitimate products. This prevents counterfeit parts from getting into the supply chain and causing faulty situations.

We also participate in industry associations like the Electronic Components Industry Association (ECIA) and the Electronics Representatives Association (ERA), which work together to ensure authorized sourcing and minimize counterfeit products. We?ˉre also part of the National Association of Wholesaler-Distributors (NAW). These organizations help us understand how to better go to market, run our companies, and support our customers and suppliers.

TI: Who are your typical customers? What are the main pain points you help them with?

JB: We focus on six primary sectors: industrial (welders, generators, power filtering equipment), military (vehicles, submarines, ships), food and beverage (blenders, ovens, walk-in coolers), commercial off-road vehicles (firetrucks, garbage trucks, cement mixers), medical (MRI machines, CT scanners, defibrillators), and energy (renewables, energy storage, smart meters).

Across industries, customer concerns often revolve around part function or application. For example, a customer might say they need a switch with a certain functionality that can survive a tough environment, but they can?ˉt find it online. We?ˉll work with them and our suppliers to find a product that fits or even make unique design changes.

Customers also come to us saying, "I need this part, but it's not a standard item. I need someone to stock it for me and put it into a wire harness.” Or:“I can?ˉt build this in-house. Can you build it for us?”?

TI: Is it often the case that customers need Marsh to stock and assemble components because they don?ˉt have the in-house capabilities?

JB: Yes. Customers are offloading more of the functionality they used to do in-house to distributors or assembly houses. This streamlines their processes and frees up their production space. They don?ˉt have to maintain raw material inventory, buy tooling, or have dedicated departments to do these services. When they outsource these capabilities, products come in as one part that can be integrated into their production. Customers can focus on the end production, testing, and certification of their products. Ultimately, it should help their bottom line by increasing efficiencies.

Our customers are looking for us to do more for them and become more integral to their business. They?ˉre asking for more than just basic assembly services; they?ˉre looking for the next level or two of assembly work, like sub-panel assemblies and box builds.

TI: What other trends are you seeing in your industry, and how are you staying ahead of them?

JB: Quality is being offloaded more into the world of distribution, so customers are asking us to be more involved in the quality and compliance of the components we sell. We?ˉve been expanding our quality offerings and quality department to support compliance and regulation, as well as things like PPAPs, which a lot of other distributors don?ˉt like to do.

Jackie Roschmann (JR): Over the past 10 to 20 years, quality and compliance requirements have grown. Regulatory requirements, product documentation needs, and product approval processes have all increased, and some of that has transitioned to us to handle as a distributor. The level of product verification and testing has also increased.

Marsh has done a great job of putting the right people and departments in place to handle these evolving standards. We have multiple people dedicated to quality, looking at documentation every day. As the intermediary between the customer and the manufacturer, we do a lot of the heavy lifting to collect the required documents.

JB: Our team has also embarked on a multi-year initiative called "modernizing Marsh.” We?ˉre adding a lot of technology, including a new ERP system for MarVac Assemblies, which will transition into a new operating system for the distribution side of the business. We?ˉve invested in quality and compliance software, design tools, and people development, utilizing AI to help our people do their jobs more efficiently. We also reconfigured our warehouse for more production space and efficiency, adding two new modular vertical storage systems for faster fulfillment.

TI: Can you share a customer success story where you exercised all your capabilities to solve their problem?

JB: One of our off-road vehicle customers had a designed and assembled control box, and they asked us to "clean it up.” The prototype they gave us was a mess of wires and parts, and the documentation was minimal.

First, we reverse-engineered it by stripping it down, used 3D modeling and printing to build the smaller parts, and reconfigured the box. Our team redid all the wiring to make it a clean, organized, and reproducible end product that was also easy to test. We also cleaned up the documentation, creating a new bill of materials and set of drawings.

In the end, our team redid the whole thing, delivering a functionally sound, well-documented product. We now handle the stocking and assembly of this box build for them, since they choose not to do it in-house.

Contact Marsh Electronics to learn more or start your project.