Welding & Gases Today Editor’s Blog 
  

Here is an interesting tidbit that might spark some ideas for additional sales of gases and welding equipment in your area.

Local jewelry manufacturers in New Mexico have been given an opportunity to be more competitive, thanks to the Socorro County Chamber of Commerce and a grant from the USDA Rural Business Enterprise fund.

The Chamber purchased $54,000 of state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment to be used cooperatively by local jewelers who meet certain small business criteria.

The equipment includes a laser welder, milling machine and vacuum casting machine.

The community qualified for the grant because it meets federal guidelines of being located in a rural area with high unemployment, low wages and few manufacturing or production jobs. The primary goal of the grant program is to encourage economic development in rural communities by retaining and creating additional jobs.

All the equipment purchased is the property of the federal government. Quarterly reports detailing its use must be submitted for three years as a condition of the grant.

It’s a major annual event for the Gases and Welding Distributors Association—the announcement of the new GAWDA board of directors, who will help lead the association through the coming year.

For 2009-10, we thought we’d handle the introduction a bit differently than in years past, when we would publish photos along with brief Q&As to help association members get to know the board a little better.

This time around, we centered the introduction on the theme of the board of directors as “superheroes” of the association, giving of their time and sharing their industry expertise to help make the association and the industry stronger.

In keeping with that theme, this year we developed a five-page comic-book style treatment to introduce the board, which you can see online at http://www.weldingandgasestoday.org/content/1q10/meetboard2009.pdf.

I hope you like it.

The U.S. Chemical Safety Board (CSB) has released a new video safety message asking for nationwide adoption of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Pressure Vessel Code to reduce the number of accidents involving major pressure vessel failures.

In the message, CSB Chairman John Bresland warns that “pressure vessels store tremendous amounts of energy and you should never become complacent about the risks.”

Particular danger exists when vessels are improperly installed, welded or modified, or when they lack effective pressure relief systems, Bresland says, and provides the following examples:

• An explosion at a natural gas well in Louisiana killed four workers when a tank rated only for atmospheric pressure was exposed to gas pressure up to 800 lbs. per sq. in.
• An eight-foot tank used to heat sugar caramel exploded when the vent line became blocked. The explosion killed an overnight operator, released large amounts of ammonia and forced a community evacuation.
• A 50,000 lb. pressure vessel that exploded at a chemical plant was found by CSB to be improperly modified and welded by the company that owned it.

The ASME Code provides the fundamental safeguards for pressure vessels including design, welding procedures and fabrication, testing and pressure relief.

Are correctional facilities among your gases and welding customers? If not, it’s definitely an avenue well worth exploring—both for the products you sell and for welder training and certification.

Correctional facilities have long strived to provide programs that teach inmates skills they can use once they have are released. Among the skills being taught at some of these facilities is welding—a smart move at a time when the welder shortage in the United States is so severe.

An example of this is taking place in Newcastle, Wyoming, where the state’s Department of Workforce Services has partnered with the Wyoming Department of Corrections to bring welder training to incarcerated individuals so that when they are released, they will be better prepared to enter the workforce.

Most recently, according to the Wyoming Business Report, welding training was offered at the minimum-security Newcastle Honor Farm. A similar program was conducted earlier this year at the Women’s Center in Lusk, Wyoming, to train inmates in heavy equipment operation.

Jeff White, the Employment Training for Self-Sufficiency Program manager for the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services, told the Wyoming Business Report: “The idea behind the program was to partner with Department of Correction. We contacted Eastern Wyoming College and arranged to use their mobile welding lab. They took their mobile welding lab to the Newcastle Honor Farm and conducted a six-week welding certification course on the Honor Farm site.”

The program just graduated six inmates at a ceremony at the Newcastle facility. The inmates participating in the training program were short-term felons who were incarcerated in Newcastle’s low risk facility.

“When these guys get released, they will have this certificate in their hands and be able to relocate wherever they desire, White said. “They will work with our local Workforce Centers to try and find a welding job.”

The goal of the program is to give inmates a chance to earn a livable wage and contribute to the betterment of their families, their children and themselves.

The University of Leicester, in the United Kingdom, is spearheading a multimillion-dollar project funded by the European Community’s Seventh Framework Program to advance welding technology.

The project will analyze the tendency of small weld imperfections to grow into major cracks and flaws. The 11-member group will attempt to better understand the flaw process over multiple scales by using computer modeling and knowledge gained from state-of-the-art laboratory and industrial experiments. The information gathered will be used to develop technology for welding deep-sea gas and oil transportation systems.

According to the consortium, titled MintWeld, welding remains the most economical and effective way to join metals permanently, and is a vital component of the manufacturing economy. It is estimated that more than 50 percent of global domestic and engineering products contain welded joints. The welding industry has traditionally supported a diverse set of companies across the shipbuilding, pipeline, automotive, aerospace, defense and construction sectors.

MintWeld representatives add that the project is highly valuable given the potential catastrophic consequences a disaster would create, as exemplified by the famed capsizing of the Norwegian Alexander Kielland—a semi-submersible drilling rig—in which 123 lost their lives due to a faulty 6mm weld.

The project is being led by researchers in the engineering and mathematics departments at the University of Leicester. Other institutions involved in the project are the University College, Dublin, Ireland; the University of Oxford, UK; NTNU, Norway; the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden; Delft University of Technology, Netherlands; the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne, Switzerland; and steel industry partners CORUS, UK; The Welding Institute, UK; Institute of Welding, Poland; and FRENZAK Sp., Poland.

Are you looking for ideas to draw attention to your gases and welding distributorship?

A great way to do that is through community projects—teaming with local schools, your gases and welding customers, city agencies and others to create activities and events that benefit the community while demonstrating your pride at being part of it.

A great example of this recently took place in Battle Creek, Michigan, where Cutler Enterprises and the Arts and Industry Council of Battle Creek Unlimited—the city’s economic development organization—created a competition for local students who were asked to create artwork representing their ideas of Battle Creek.

Shouldice Brothers, a Battle Creek metal fabrication shop, then took the artwork and reproduced it in steel panels that will hang in large arches at the entrance to the city as part of a downtown revitalization plan.

The steel images include Sojourner Truth, a man with a healthy heart, a Battle Creek Central High School girls’ basketball player and a cityscape featuring a giant bowl of cereal.

Dave Van Middlesworth, one of the owners of Shouldice Brothers, said he thought the project was a good chance to give back to the community. “It’s kind of neat that we’re doing something for the entry to the city,” he told the Battle Creek Enquirer, “and trying to give back a little bit along the way, work with the kids and promote them along the way.” Van Middlesworth said the combined supplies and labor cost about $23,000.

The student artists were invited to the fabrication shop to see the steel panels being made. A Shouldice Brothers employee showed them how the artwork was scanned and sent to fabrication. The demonstration quickly moved over to the high-definition plasma cutter, which used electricity and compressed gas to slice through steel plates and make the artwork.

The Infrastructurist, a Web site for the construction industry, recently took a look at ten infrastructure-related jobs with bright prospects.

According to the site, in spite of the economic downturn, the global infrastructure sector is poised to see $35 trillion in spending over the next two decades. Moreover, the jobs in question tend to be the sort that can’t be outsourced overseas.

“Most infrastructure work is domestic by nature, after all,” the report says. “And these jobs also tend to be tied to real-world technical skills—unlike many that were lost when America’s bubble economy deflated last year.”

As a follow-up to that report, The Infrastructurist recently added five more “hot jobs” to that initial list. At the top of the list—Certified Arc Welding Technician.

“Arc welding is a common technique of fusing metals, and robotic arc welding—as the name suggests—is this process as preformed by robots,” the site says. “Automation ensures a higher quality of the weld—up to 50 percent better—and increases productivity by up to three times. Who maintains these armies of welding robots? A robotic arc welding technician, of course. As Jeff Noruk, president of industry firm Servo Robot puts it, ‘Robots are like babies. They need care every single day.’”

This is very good news for GAWDA distributors, especially considering that before anyone can claim this “hot job,” somebody else has to invest in the technology and the gases and welding products necessary for this technician to do his job.

$35 trillion in infrastructure spending over the next two decades. Now that’s what I call a market!

Considering that cylinder tracking through bar coding has become such an important part of many gases and welding distributors’ businesses, I thought you might be interested to know that today is the 57th anniversary of the first patent for the bar code.

Inventors Norman Woodland and Bernard Silver filed the patent in 1949, which was granted on October 7, 1952. The original patent was for a system that would encode data in a bulls eye pattern so that it was scanable in any direction.

In the world of gas cylinder distribution, the bar code is a technical innovation that has become an essential part of business. So much so, in fact, that the feature section of most recent issue of Welding & Gases Today devotes considerable space to the topic of bar codes as an invaluable tool for your business.

If you haven’t done so already, be sure to check it out at Welding & Gases Today Online.

You can learn more about the history of the bar code here.

How well are you managing your number one asset?

For the latest issue of Welding & Gases Today, I spoke with a number of distributors on the importance of keeping a sharp eye on cylinder inventories.

Beyond knowing how many cylinders these distributors own, by maintaining an electronic tracking system—typically bar codes or transponders—they are able to know precisely how many cylinders are sitting idle at the main facility or accumulating at branches, how many are with customers, how long they’ve been with customers, the type of service they’re in, which cylinders are due for retesting…the list of benefits goes on and on.

To be honest, I was surprised to learn that more welding and gases distributors do not employ tracking systems. Considering the cash value of a single cylinder, the idea of losing even one is tantamount to lighting a cigar with a $100 bill.

Then there is the strain created on business relationships – like when inventory records show that a customer has 20 cylinders but he claims to have only 15 – resulting in a pitched battle over who is in error and ultimately responsible for paying for the lost assets.

In “Managing Your Number One Asset,” GAWDA distributors who have become real experts in the field of tracking technology share their wisdom and experience and explain why they can’t imagine operating their companies any other way.

It’s interesting stuff—and just may help you decide once and for all if the time has come to invest in a cylinder management system for your business.

I am very pleased to announce that the latest issue of Welding & Gases Today is now in the mail and already available online.

The issue is chock full of information that is not only invaluable to those in the welding and gases business, but those working in allied industries as well.

Topics include:

Managing and Safe Handling of Cylinder Assets

An Update on the Economic Recovery

Liability Issues for Business Owners who Provide Company Cars

Advice for Family and Non-Family Members working in Family Businesses

An Update on GAWDAwiki

Ways to Make LinkedIn, the Professional Networking Site, Work For You

And that just scratches the surface. Visit Welding & Gases Today online and load up on all sorts of information that will help you and your business succeed.

I welcome your feedback on the latest issue and encourage you to contact me with topics you’d like covered in the future.

It’s your input that insures we are covering the stories you want and need to read about.