Category Archives: Induron Values

Why Cycle Count Matters in Paint Production

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By John Anspach, VP of Operations

You’ve heard us talk about “cycle count.” This number is a tool to gauge how efficient and consistent you are when making paint.

Each time a batch is made, technicians perform a battery of tests to ensure it matches the formula and meets qualifications for viscosity, solids and flow. If it’s just right the first time, the cycle count is zero. If something is even a tiny bit off, the batch goes back to technicians and is adjusted. Testing is then repeated until the paint matches the qualifications exactly.

Each adjustment adds a number to the count. One adjustment equals a cycle count of 1, and so on. We take the average number of adjustments to get our cycle count. You can see why you would want to keep this number low:  Continue reading Why Cycle Count Matters in Paint Production →

True Investment in Infrastructure – It’s Worth the Effort

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By Davies Hood, Induron President

As we approach the November elections in our politically-charged atmosphere, we’ve been hearing a lot about “investing in infrastructure” from one side and “debt reduction” from the other. In this article from Water & Waste Digest magazine, Benjamin Grumbles makes some suggestions that those in power should at least consider.

Although Mr. Grumbles speaks as the president of the Clean Water America Alliance (and when I hear that, I immediately think both “bureaucracy” and “lobbyist”), he writes in favor of such radical ideas as charging customers the true cost of water, promoting public/private partnerships in the water industry, and planning both water and wastewater infrastructure projects as part of the larger integrated community planning process. Not too radical when you think about it, right? Continue reading True Investment in Infrastructure – It’s Worth the Effort →

Look for Innovation, and the World Will Beat a Path to Your Door

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By Linc A. York, Induron Sales Rep, Troy, MO

How do you get the world to beat a path to your door? You know the answer – build a better mousetrap.

When I read this article from Coatings Tech magazine online, I thought immediately of this phrase. The “open innovation” approach discussed in this article is a new spin on what I’ve called “building a better mousetrap” in the coatings industry.  The authors of the piece emphasize how much competitive advantage is gained when we look outside our own company for the best ideas for new and innovative products and applications.

Before we knew what to call this concept, we were doing it here at Induron.  We draw on many sources of information – raw material suppliers, the needs and desires of our customers, new technology we’re seeing in the marketplace, our R&D staff, and of course our sales force – for new product ideas. Then we’re nimble enough to develop, test and launch a product in six to 12 months. Continue reading Look for Innovation, and the World Will Beat a Path to Your Door →

How we’ve gotten more business using LinkedIn – and how you can too

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By Davies Hood, Induron President

Any professional who’s been around social networks these days has heard about the power of LinkedIn when it comes to job hunting and recruiting for positions. But have you thought about what it could do for your company’s sales process?

Here at Induron, we’ve been surprised – and quite pleasantly so! – by the power of this social network tool to help our sales staff be more successful. One of the most memorable examples comes from Tex Enoch, one of our sales representatives, and his LinkedIn profile. An engineer with two water tanks in need of rehabilitation needed to know certain specifications of the paint used on his tank. A search on LinkedIn for “coatings” led this engineer to Tex’s profile. They connected through LinkedIn, and Tex provided the information this engineer needed. And he did such a great job that the engineer asked Tex to speak to his municipal authority on the tank rehabilitation, and also spec the products going forward. If Tex hadn’t had a great LinkedIn profile, who knows if this project ever would have come our way? Continue reading How we’ve gotten more business using LinkedIn – and how you can too →

Reliable Protection Through Innovative – and Greener! – Coatings

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By John Anspach, Induron Technical Director

As local and national environmental regulations changed, particularly in the 1990s, Induron and companies like ours needed to document compliance with the new rules.  Regulatory agencies were (and are) taking a much firmer stance on emissions, and it was clear changes were going to have to be made.

The rewards for lowering emissions are substantial – demonstrating lowered emissions means eligibility for a Synthetic Minor permit, which shows the community in general and the industry in particular that your company is committed to environmentally-responsible manufacturing; thus making you much more attractive to customers looking for like-minded suppliers.

But it can’t be a “one and done” process. You’ll need to look at your emissions levels both now and in the future – since you’ll hopefully be producing at even greater levels in the future as your business expands. Continue reading Reliable Protection Through Innovative – and Greener! – Coatings →

Induron: Helping Kids Beat the Summer Heat

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By Linc York, Induron Sales Rep, Troy, MO

Not all epoxy coatings are created equal. I have read dozens of specifications that call for using a polyamidoamine epoxy coating in immersion and corrosive environments. Other than being hard to spell and pronounce, polyamidoamine epoxies are highly cross-linked, chemical- and abrasion-resistant protective coatings. However, that is where the similarities apparently end.

Bazan Painting Company has been in business since 1977, and as an industrial painting company, has worked with all the major and many of the smaller manufacturers of coatings. They typically paint 30 to 40 swimming pools every year. That’s a lot of responsibility for summer fun, and Bazan Painting has earned an excellent reputation. In addition to being a demanding task, it is a very short painting season – from the end of winter in the mid-West until pools open on Memorial Day. The protective coating has to be tinted correctly and delivered on time. Eric Hellwig, Bazan’s Purchasing Agent, says that Induron’s customer service is the best.

Walt Bazan, Jr., the owner, had been using a well-known polyamidoamine epoxy for years. It seemed to be working O.K., but he noticed that some customers were complaining that it just wasn’t holding up very well.

Fortunately, Walt agreed to try Induron Perma-Clean II polyamidoamine epoxy on a couple of pools as a test. And as they say, the rest is history. Continue reading Induron: Helping Kids Beat the Summer Heat →

From Space Frontiers to Water Tower Paint

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By David Hood, Induron CEO

Sputnik

I remember well the afternoon of Oct. 4, 1957 – it was a big time in my life (and maybe yours too). I was somewhere between Gainsville, GA, and Birmingham, riding in the car with my dad. He had been in Gainsville for the weekend working as a volunteer “corner flagman” at an SCCA amateur sports car race. I was just a 14-year-old kid, amazed at the cars and men (and a few women) who drove them.

On that particular late afternoon, we were listening to the evening news when a strange “beep, beep, beep” sound came over the radio. It was a sound that changed almost everything in my future.

It was Sputnik!

The radio announcer explained that the Russians had launched a rocket that carried a device into orbit around the earth, where it would stay for a very long time with no further “push” and send radio signals until the battery went dead.

I was – and have been ever since – fascinated by all things mechanical. I was also (then and ever since) a red-blooded patriotic American, and I was not going to stand by and do nothing while those Russians were beating us technologically! That night I decided I was going to engineering school. I think many other Americans made the same decision, because, as you know, we developed a far superior and much more sophisticated space program than did anyone else on the world. Continue reading From Space Frontiers to Water Tower Paint →

Relationship Selling

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By Tex Enoch, Induron Sales Representative

We live in a fast-paced world.  The internet and cell phones have dramatically improved sales people’s ability to increase their customer base.  However, at the same time, these tools have also enhanced our productivity, thus decreasing the response time demanded by both their employer and customers.

I began my career having to use payphones to make calls on the road and snail-mail to confirm almost everything else.  Everything was much slower, but much more personal.  Office visits were encouraged, lunches and dinners were commonplace and relationships were established.

As someone who’s been in the sales business for a long time, I know that lasting relationships cannot be built via e-mail and cell phone contact.  Personal interaction is necessary, and the longer that contact can be maintained, the stronger the relationship will become.

So just how valuable IS relationship selling? I believe it accomplishes two vital aspects of the selling process:

  • Establishing you as the expert. Having a strong relationship with a client means that the he or she will naturally turn to you as his expert.  When a question or product need arises, the sales rep with the strongest relationship will be asked to solve the problem, provide advice or establish the product criteria for the project about to be designed. Continue reading Relationship Selling →

The Green Initiative: Coming to Industrial Coatings

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By Davies Hood, Induron Executive Vice President

Induron Coatings is happy to see the GREEN Initiative making its way from architectural paint into the industrial coatings realm. As this article from Paint Square describes, infrastructure projects from water lines to bridges to wastewater treatment plants are going to have a new green measuring stick, thanks to Paul Zofnass, a Harvard alumnus and longtime strategic and financial advisor to CEOs in the engineering/consulting industry.

Induron’s line of 100% solids (VOC & HAP free), ceramic epoxies are some of the greenest products on the market. It also helps that they are among the most user-friendly plural component products available today.

This green movement will be good for our nation and the coatings market too, if lifetime costs analysis are part of the equation. A product might be “green,” but if it’s no good and you end up having to paint a structure more often, where is the value, much less the green advantage? For the green Initiative to be considered a success in infrastructure projects, the products used have to be not only green (low VOC, HAP free, sustainable materials, etc.), but they have to be high quality as well.

At Induron, we welcome the green Initiative to the Industrial Coatings market, because we have user-friendly, ceramic epoxies that have stood the test of time and add value to infrastructure projects.

You get the paint – We’ll pick up the tab for the buildings

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By David Hood, Induron President

William Hood, founder (light suit on right) stands next to one of Induron's original buildings - still in use today.

Here at Induron, we have an old paint factory—and that’s a good thing.

“Why?” you may ask. “Newer is always better!” But we benefit and our customers benefit from our factory’s age. Let me explain…

Our oldest building was built in the 1930s – “before the war.” Our newest building was built in 1995 and houses our testing lab, offices for the “technical guys” and a conference area (which used to be a library, but now we use the internet  instead).

All of our buildings are made of steel and concrete and are up to date on all regulations, as required. But they all have at least one other feature which counts for a lot – they are paid for. So is the roughly 4 acres on which they stand. The only building not fully depreciated is the newest one, and it is more than halfway depreciated.

“So what !?” you ask. Well, since these buildings are old, paid for and mostly depreciated, they no longer add to our cost. So they are not included in the prices we charge.

Another advantage in their being old is that they were built to accommodate both the architectural paint volume we manufactured (as Indurall Coatings) prior to 1996, as well as the industrial paint volume of Induron Coatings. That means that Induron has the capacity to make much more paint than we currently sell. Since that “excess” capacity is fully paid for, we are ready to add volume at no additional “occupancy” cost. After all, we’ve been making paint here for 65 years. That’s good for our customers as well as for us! Continue reading You get the paint – We’ll pick up the tab for the buildings →