Year: 2019

In 1972, I graduated LeTourneau College (now LeTourneau University) with a degree in welding engineering and began working for a small manufacturing firm as part of its five-person engineering group. My fellow team members were over 40 years old, which seemed ancient to me at the time.  However, I found it rewarding to introduce them to the exciting new ideas I had learned in college, which made the experience enjoyable. Over time, I noticed I did not share the enthusiasm my colleagues had for the work we performed, and this made me anxious. Eventually I approached my manager with a…

Really? Every business? This will seem obvious to larger companies with skilled marketing teams and dedicated resources, but to the small, independent business owner, along with a small staff of do-everything-every-day employees, it might not strike a chord. As a matter of fact, it could probably come off as being a nuisance, but stay with me here and I’ll explain why and provide a clear and simple means to get there. Ask yourself a few questions first: What is my brand or identity? Where is my business today? Who is my ideal customer? What is my competition doing? Look around…

Run an internet search for cryotherapy and you will see many celebrities and pro athletes touting the benefits of this treatment. From athletic recovery to anti-aging, the advertised benefits keep growing, and it seems the whole country has now hopped on the arctic bandwagon. While it sounds exotic, cryotherapy is simply the use of low temperatures to provide physiological benefits. In the 1970s, whole body cryotherapy (WBC) was developed in Japan as a method of treating rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. It involves the immersion of the body in a cryotherapy unit, with only the user’s head outside of the…

The GAWDA mission is to promote the safe operation and economic vitality of distributors of industrial gases and related welding equipment and supplies. The association carries this out in many ways, but central to the group’s effectiveness has always been an open sharing of ideas among its membership in support of each other. In 2000, GAWDA’s acting president, J. David Mahoney, and his wife, Donna, suggested that GAWDA might extend this notion of sharing to the communities that host their annual event, coining the initiative as GAWDA Gives Back. Nearly 20 years later, the program has donated over $2.3 million…

Over a hundred years ago, two entrepreneurial brothers, Walter and John Brant, recognized the need for a gas supplier to serve the state of Indiana and neighboring communities. Together they founded Indiana Oxygen Company (IOC) in 1915, which initially supplied products to the local automotive industry including the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway. According to Wally Brant, chief executive officer and grandson of founder Walter Brant, Indiana Oxygen was not only the first oxygen manufacturer (through electrolysis) and distributor in Indiana, it remains the oldest surviving gas and welding supply distributor in the nation. Being the first in the state, Indiana…

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has submitted an Information Collection Request to the Office of Management and Budget seeking approval to conduct a study on truck and bus maintenance requirements and their impact on safety. The FMCSA notice states the goal of the study is to determine what improvements, ranging from better compliance interventions to better vehicle maintenance requirements, would enhance motor carrier safety. A 2014 study by the DOT’s Volpe National Transportation Systems Center on the effectiveness of the FMCSA’s Safety Measurement System in identifying the highest risk motor carriers to be targeted for interventions found that motor…

Have you received a warning letter from the DOT asking you to review your record and improve your overall score? Several of our members have received such letters. This is not a letter that you want to get. It is a warning letter that, in so many words, means that if you do not improve your score, then you may be visited — another way of saying that you may get an audit. You may look at your overall record and review your score by going to the Safety Management System (SMS) website at this address: ai.fmcsa.dot.gov/SMS/. This site allows…

What is the Latest FDA Thinking About Expiration Dates on Medical Gases? 21 CFR 211.137(a) clearly states that drugs must bear an expiration date. However, this does not represent the latest agency thinking or enforcement regarding expiration dating of medical gases. Enforcement Discretion We have three recent examples of FDA communication regarding expiration dates: In a message from the FDA to a medical gas firm, the agency stated: The agency is currently developing guidance pertaining to stability testing and expiration dating of medical gases. Pending publication of FDA guidance on this subject, our policy has been to use enforcement discretion…

Messer Group and CVC Close Acquisition of Linde Messer Group and CVC Capital Partners Fund VII recently announced the completion of the planned acquisition of certain businesses in North and South America from Linde plc, launching a new name in the Americas market. Messer Americas offers largely the same products, services and people customers have come to know and trust. Together with Messer Group, the company represents a USD $3 billion global enterprise that includes presence in the Americas, Europe and Asia. “I am proud to serve as CEO of Messer in the Americas, a continuation of my prior role,”…

Computers Unlimited Releases New Bulk Gas Module Computers Unlimited has released a new TIMS Bulk Gas Manager for managing bulk gas tank installations, forecasting, ordering, scheduling, billing and payment processing for all bulk gas operations within the TIMS system. The system allows the user to track any/all gases (propane, CO2, hydrogen, argon, helium, nitrogen and oxygen), as well as to run multiple gas managers at the same time for various gases. To run the manager, the user simply chooses a bulk gas type, selects the configurations and UOM conversions specific to each gas, then reads the dashboard to forecast future…