The Product Nobody Thinks About—Until It Fails

How Panduit’s Commitment to Continuous Innovation Is Reshaping Cable Protection

Cable cleats don’t get much attention until something goes wrong; then they matter a great deal. In a short circuit, for example, they help keep power cables restrained long enough for protective devices to clear the fault. Without that restraint, the damage can spread well beyond a single circuit.

That high-stakes job is exactly why cable cleats remain an active area of innovation at Panduit. To get the inside story, we spoke with Andy Booth, Global Product Manager for Cable Cleats at Panduit, about why this category keeps changing with cable design, fault levels, standards, and field conditions.

A Cable Cleat Earns Its Keep in the Worst Few Milliseconds

Panduit’s cable cleat story starts with a basic distinction: cable ties manage cables in normal conditions, but cable cleats must also withstand the violent forces of a short circuit.

Q: For readers who may not be familiar, what exactly is a cable cleat compared to a cable tie?

Andy Booth: The difference between a cable tie and a cable cleat is that a cable cleat has to withstand huge electromagnetic forces during a short circuit. That’s quite different from a static load. Something like 150,000 newtons can happen within five milliseconds. It’s the job of the cable cleat to keep the cable safe until the circuit breakers do their job and quench the fault.

Q: Why does that matter so much in the field?

Andy Booth: Short circuits happen every single day globally. The best-case scenario is cable cleats have been installed, and they’ve saved the day. The worst-case scenario: someone gets electrocuted or even worse. There are cases of fatalities where people have been walking past, or the cables have started to arc and burn. So it is safety-critical.

Q: And a cable tie can’t do that job?

Andy Booth: A plastic cable tie is there to manage those cables in a static condition. A cable cleat can do that as well, but also protect it in case of a short circuit.

Panduit Changed the Category by Rethinking What a Cable Cleat Could Be

Panduit didn’t enter the market by copying the standard fixed-shape design. It invented a strap cleat that gave installers more range while still delivering true short-circuit protection.

Q: How has Panduit changed the cable cleat category?

Andy Booth: For a long time, the traditional cable cleat followed the same basic model. It had a fixed shape. It was bulky, expensive to make, and built around a very specific cable size and configuration.

That created limits. If the cable turned up under or oversized, the cleat might not work. You either had to send the cable back or send the cleats back.

At Panduit, we introduced what we call a strap cleat. It’s a hybrid between a cable tie and a cable cleat, but it has every bit the performance of a cable cleat. It gives you much more flexibility because you can use it around one cable, three cables, four cables, or a bundle.

Q: So the shift was not just in performance. It changed how the product worked on site.

Andy Booth: Exactly. That was a big innovation for the industry. All of a sudden, there was a manufacturer out there with a strap cleat that had the advantages of a tie, but the strength of the cleat.

Q: How was this innovation developed?

Andy Booth: We started the research in 2017 when I came in as a consultant. It was two years of pushing, questioning, prototyping, and testing.

By 2019, we had 80% of our current portfolio, and we were ready to go to market. We’ve gone from zero, a startup business back in 2019, to today being the world’s largest cable cleat manufacturer in terms of revenue.

Q: What makes that lead hold up?

Andy Booth: We have patents on our strap cleats. I think it’s telling that no one has been able to design around the original intellectual property held by Panduit. No one in the industry has copied our most popular cable strap cleats.

Continuous Innovation Means Moving Fast and Helping Write the Rules

Panduit’s cable cleat work goes beyond product design. The team helps shape North American standards, tests against them, and pushes ideas into working products at an unusual speed.

Q: What does continuous innovation look like in practice?

Andy Booth: We can’t just design a cable cleat and then say, ok that’s it for the next 10 years. We’ve got to go to technical conferences. We’ve got to be on the standards committees. We’ve got to know what’s coming next. If we know what’s coming next, we can innovate and we can invent.

Q: You've also played a role in standards leadership for this category. Why did that matter for safety, not just adoption?

Andy Booth: When we first went out into North America, there was reluctance. It was a brand-new product for the region, and there were few if any regional standards. And without a regional standard to test against, it was harder to prove a cleat would hold up when a fault hit, which is a safety issue. We quickly learned we needed to do something here.

So we started to work with CSA Group and NEMA (National Electrical Manufacturers Association). I chaired the NEMA standard and served as vice chair on the CSA standard. We used the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) standard as guidance, but we wrote in the regional differences. Now we’re the first company to have driven those standards in North America, and we’re the first company to test to those standards.

Q: And when a new problem shows up?

Andy Booth: Sometimes you’ve just got to go for it. Last week, we were given a potential problem. We needed a certain type of cable cleat to do a certain job. Within five days, my senior engineer Chris and I blacksmithed and 3D printed five prototype cable cleats. We took them to Holland and we short-circuit tested them, and they passed the highest level.

To test that invention successfully within five days, for me, that’s true innovation. We’ll probably turn that into a saleable product by the end of this year.

Q: Is that pace part of the philosophy?

Andy Booth: With innovation comes speed. There’s knowledge there and experience, but just do it quickly. If it fails, that’s okay. Have a problem, look at the problem, and try to fix it quickly. If you don’t fix it, try again.

Looking for more information? Learn about Panduit cable cleat solutions here.