Datastick Systems has hired 30-year vibration and balancing veteran Derek Norfield as director of applications. His mission is to help Datastick customers to get easy-to-understand answers to complex vibration questions. Norfield will be conducting training seminars and developing procedures for many different industries to help them achieve maximum uptime with Datastick products. Norfield has worked with the UK division of Reutlinger GmBH and with the American Hofmann Corp., before starting an independent vibration, balancing and training company. He also authored the book "Practical Balancing of Rotating Machinery" published by Elsevier Technical Press. One of Mr. Norfield’s first responsibilities is the creation and delivery of introductory vibration training seminars for Datastick customers and others who are new to vibration analysis. The first of these seminars will take place at Datastick’s headquarters in Campbell, California on February 1, 2, and 3. "Derek proves the old adage that a real expert can make a complex subject seem easy," said Michael Scandling, Datastick V. P. of Marketing. "This is vitally important as large companies are losing their vibration experts to retirement and small companies recognize the need for vibration analysis in maintenance but don’t know how to begin. Many of our customers have told us that in order to get started they need a simple, uncomplicated approach to vibration. That’s what Derek and Datastick provide." In addition to training, Norfield will work with Datastick to build programs to help customers to build effective vibration analysis into their maintenance programs. In some cases this will mean starting from scratch and in other cases it will mean streamlining existing procedures to help generate effective maintenance solutions from complex vibration data.