When Team Penske executives were courting Japanese tool company Tungaloy to become a partner of the race team last year, Tungaloy executives had a clear goal in mind if they were to sign up.
Tungaloy wanted to increase the amount of tools it sold to Japanese manufacturing giant Mazak, which has been with Team Penske for more than 25 years.
Fast forward to Aug. 30 of this year, and Tungaloy finally got its chance when the team hosted its first Manufacturing Technology Summit at its team headquarters outside Charlotte. The summit was a new iteration on prior get-togethers the team has hosted that focused on business-to-business opportunities, but it was the first one that brought together sponsors that were solely focused around manufacturing.
Tony Starnes, northeast regional manager of Tungaloy America, said that Tungaloy made solid inroads with Mazak executives at the conference.
“Our goal ultimately is to be involved in Mazak’s new machine sales where a new machine has Tungaloy tooling on it,” Starnes said. “We had that conversation at lunch that day, and we’re kind of moving forward with some ideas of how we can do that.”
Jonathan Gibson, Team Penske’s vice president of marketing and communications, said the event was another way to provide value for the team’s partners. He said the team is gearing up for its next partner summit, which will be held in October at Google headquarters.
