Hilscher North America has become a "First Team Honoree" in Automation World's first ?Leadership in Automation? program. The debut survey asked Automation World readers what companies they would have on their ?First Team? when choosing partners for automation projects. Gary Mintchell, Co-Founder and Editor in Chief of Automation World says that factory automation and process automation were covered by the survey, which involved readers from engineering, management, operations and information technology. Mintchell said: "The results are a short list of companies to whom your peers go first when they are looking for innovative solutions to their automation problems." The web-based survey was constructed so readers were not prompted with any pre-selected companies. There were several hundred responses and nearly 50 categories were nominated. Hilscher was voted one of four First Team members in the Networking Components: Ethernet category.