Ray Nicholas, Vice President, IT of SMP receives AAIA Visionary Award

The Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) has presented the 2012 Aftermarket Visionary Award to Ray Nicholas, Vice President, Information Technology of Standard Motor Products.

The Automotive Aftermarket Industry Association (AAIA) has presented the 2012 Aftermarket Visionary Award to Ray Nicholas, Vice President, Information Technology of Standard Motor Products (SMP). The award was presented in recognition of his leadership and volunteer contributions to the advancement of technology in the aftermarket. The award was announced at the AAIA Fall Leadership Days meetings September 6, 2012 in San Francisco, California.

Image text: Ray Nicholas, Vice President, IT at Standard Motor Products holds his AAIA 2012 Aftermarket Visionary Award.

The members of the AAIA Technology Standards Committee selected Nicholas in recognition of his years of service to the committee and tireless commitment to new technologies that add efficiency and improved levels of service to the relationship between SMP and its customers.

“Ray is someone to whom the aftermarket industry turns to get things done and go further than others have gone before,” said Scott Luckett, CIO, AAIA. “Ray Nicholas ensured that Standard Motor Products was among the very first to build Web services to streamline electronic transactions with customers and support aftermarket data standards as a common language for catalog and product information exchange. Recently, Standard developed an automatic test bed for trading partners and other suppliers to use in validating their Internet Parts Ordering (IPO) Web services.”

Ray Nicholas has been vice president, information technology, since September 2006. He joined SMP in 1990 as data processing manager for the Four Seasons Division. In November 2001, he was promoted to manager, information systems/ERP projects. From September 2003 until September 2006, Nicholas was director, information technology. He is also a past chairman of the AASA Technology Committee.