What Do FORTEC’s Distributor Awards Say About Supply Reliability?

FORTEC’s distributor awards say that panel manufacturers trust the FORTEC Group to sell and support their displays. Two of them have named FORTEC Integrated, our sister company in Germering, Germany, their best distributor: Tianma with its Best European Distributor 2024 award, and Mitsubishi with its Best TFT-LCD Distributor Award 2014. The awards belong to FORTEC Integrated. For a US OEM, what they reflect is the strength of the manufacturer relationships behind the panels we design into display assemblies in Ronkonkoma, New York, and a display assembly stays available only as long as its panel does.

What did Tianma’s Best European Distributor award recognize?

A partnership of more than 25 years. Over that time, FORTEC Integrated and Tianma have worked closely to deliver Tianma TFT displays for medical technology, industrial applications and other demanding environments. Tianma’s professional P-Series, from 3.5 to 27 inches, shows what those projects need: high brightness, sharpness and color accuracy, robustness against vibration, a wide operating temperature range, and long-term availability for safety-critical applications.

More than 50 current Tianma displays are in our catalog, among them the TM070JVHG33-01 and the TM101JDHG30-00.

What happened to the Mitsubishi displays behind the 2014 award?

They are discontinued, because Mitsubishi Electric has stopped making TFT displays. In 2014, Mitsubishi recognized FORTEC Integrated for outstanding sales performance, crediting its strong inventory commitment and customer support alongside Mitsubishi’s own range. That range ran from 5 to 19 inches, with versions offering up to 1,500 cd/m², 170°/170° viewing angles and -30 to +80°C operation. Every Mitsubishi panel on our site is now end-of-life. FORTEC Integrated answered the shutdown with its own compatible successor displays, which we cover in how to find a compatible replacement when a display goes end-of-life.

Why does a supplier’s standing with manufacturers matter for supply?

Because it decides how early you hear about a change and what can be done about it. Across the Group, we monitor every product we offer for manufacturers’ product change notifications (PCN) and end-of-life (EOL) notices, so a last-time buy can be placed in time. Multiple warehouses with high stock capacity let us hold time-sensitive components, and where a part is discontinued we find drop-in replacements or compatible products, customizing them mechanically or electrically where the system needs it. That is our obsolescence management service, and our guide on how to plan for component obsolescence explains how to build it into a design.

What else has the FORTEC Group been recognized for?

• Products: FORTEC Integrated’s BLO-Line fire protection monitors were named Product of the Year 2024 in the structural fire protection category by FeuerTrutz. Read what the BLO-Line won, and why fire-safe display design matters.
• Distribution: in 2022, FORTEC Integrated was nominated for elektroniknet.de’s Distributor of the Year in the category for specialist distributors of semiconductors, embedded, displays and assemblies.
• Community: in 2022, the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior recognized FORTEC Integrated as a volunteer-friendly company. Five of its employees in Germering serve with the volunteer fire department.

We are not a distributor ourselves. We design and manufacture display assemblies in Ronkonkoma, and the FORTEC Group gives us access to its manufacturer relationships and stock.

Tell us where your design has to work, and we will take it from there. We choose a panel with long-term availability in mind, build the assembly around it, and stay with the project from first samples to series production. If that panel later receives an EOL notice, we tell you early and plan with you: a last-time buy to cover your remaining builds, or qualifying a replacement before supply runs out. Contact FORTEC US.