Message From The President of ETI
Ben Johnson
Director, Product Management, Mitchell1

I’m honored to be President of ETI this year, especially during such an exciting time in our industry and your industry association. 

It is truly amazing to be part of the industry responsible for keeping vehicles on the road, as the complexity in those vehicles continues to increase with no end in sight. Ten years ago “hybrid” was a science project; now I see Chevy Volts, Toyota Prius’s and even Tahoe hybrids almost every day as I make my commute to work in my “clean diesel” vehicle. Cars are better than ever at sensing imminent collisions and implementing countermeasures to minimize injuries to the passengers. They are also “rolling offices”, assisting the connection of the occupants to their offices and contacts all while delivering multimedia entertainment for the kids. Some even park and drive themselves.    

These new vehicles require new service techniques. New skills are required of the technicians of today, both to understand these new technologies and to develop logical processes for identifying root causes for symptoms. We heard it loud and clear at ToolTech:  New tools integrated with information are necessary to address an ever-expanding portfolio of systems which interact with one another. 

As the vehicle has transformed, ETI has transformed with it. Hopefully you see it – in the newsletters we publish each month which we try to fill with meaningful information for our membership, to the adaptation of our important “Tech Weeks” as more manufacturers show up in the American market. Even ToolTech, which began in 1947 as an ETI annual meeting – has continued to adapt itself to the needs of our membership. Our program committee, board of directors and executive staff spend countless hours reviewing feedback from members, evaluating trends in the industry and determining what we believe is necessary and valuable information to share at these events. We select topics and speakers with a singular focus - to foster and maintain a relationship between the aftermarket and the OE community as we jointly work to maintain the vehicles on North American roadways. 

I think we hit a home run with ToolTech this year, and for those who attended, I truly hope you feel the same way. In either event I hope you provided the feedback which will help our program committee plan for an even better lineup of speakers and topics for ToolTech 2014 in beautiful Sonoma. 

As I said earlier, I’m truly honored to be your President this year. It is an exciting time to be in this industry and part of this association. I’m proud to be here at a time when we’re discussing things like Telematics and the associated challenges and opportunities. I’m proud to be here at a time when multiple associations are tackling relevant topics which are timely and necessary if we are to keep our joint members successful and our customers on the road. My focus during my tenure here will be to continue to drive cross-association collaboration. I will continue our focus on Telematics, as I believe it can become a huge obstacle, or a great opportunity depending on how we as an industry react to it. And I will focus on continuing to apply ETI resources where appropriate to meet the changing needs of you, our membership. We have added new talent to the organization last year, and we are evaluating adding more technical resources this year. We’re well supported by you, our members, and we take the responsibility that goes along with that seriously. We will continue to take steps to insure that, no matter what happens with our industry and the vehicles we support, ETI will be at the forefront, fostering collaborative relationships with the OEs and other stakeholders in our joint desire to keep cars on the road.