Controls integrator for the North Bay

Strule Automation is an independent controls integrator working across the North Bay — Sonoma, Solano, Napa and Marin — and out into the wider Northern California region. We're based in Napa, which puts most of the North Bay inside an easy drive, so you get a controls engineer who's genuinely local rather than a name on a national roster.

The North Bay's industry doesn't fit one mould: food and beverage in Sonoma and Solano, aggregates and building materials, water and wastewater districts, packaging, organics and material recovery, and general manufacturing. What they share is a dependence on control systems that have usually been added to and patched over the years by several different vendors. That's exactly the ground an independent integrator is useful on: we don't sell a platform, so we can work across whatever's already installed and fix the seams between them.

Why local matters for controls work

When a line is down, the cost isn't the day rate — it's the tonnage or product you're not making while you wait. A controls engineer an hour away can be on site the same day and back again if the fault doesn't perform on command, which the intermittent ones rarely do. National integrators bill the windshield time and schedule you behind whoever shouted first. Being based in the North Bay means we don't.

Independent, and straight about it

Controls diagnosis has no guaranteed answer up front, and some problems that present as control issues are really worn-out or undersized equipment wearing a costume. We'll tell you which is which, even when the honest answer is a wrench or a purchase order rather than more of our time.