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Manufacturing Index Goes Highest Since 2004

Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in January for the 6th consecutive month, and the overall economy grew for the 9th consecutive month, say the nation's supply executives in the latest Manufacturing ISM Report On Business®.

The organization's "PMI" rose to 58.4%, its highest reading since August 2004 when it registered 58.5%. The latest monthly report provides significant assurance that the manufacturing sector is in recovery. Both the New Orders and Production Indexes are above 60%, indicating strong current and future performance for manufacturing.

THE LAST 12 MONTHS

Texas OCTG Plant To Start Up In Aug.
Boomerang Tube, LLC announced that the company has finalized funding to build a new manufacturing facility in Liberty, TX to produce welded OCTG and line pipe for oil and gas customers in the U.S. and Canada.  Construction of the new facility, formerly owned by Allied Tube & Conduit, will be financed by Access Industries, a New York-based industrial group.  Access has committed $200 million for the project.  The facility will commence operations in August 2010. Boomerang, based in St. Louis, is headed by Gregg Eisenberg, former chairman and CEO of Maverick Tube Corp.

German Pipe Maker To Build Stainless Plant In MS
Wilh. Schulz GMBH , headquartered in Krefeld, Germany, plans to build a stainless steel pipe manufacturing plant in Tunica, MS. The $300 million facility, to be constructed over the next five years, will be the German company's first manufacturing site in North America. Schulz's Mississippi division will be known as Schulz Xtruded Products or SXP.  Established in 1945, Schulz has successfully executed test production of clad pipes using a new process for producing seamless extruded metallurgical bonded pipe and has received its first orders. The company will produce these clad pipes exclusively in its new facility in Mississippi.

Tyco Flow Control To Expand In Harlingen
Tyco Flow Control intends to expand its facility in Harlingen, TX by adding 33,000 sq. ft. and additional equipment to an existing 80,000 sq. ft. facility. The Harlingen facility began operations in 1984 under the name of Keystone Valve/Anderson Greenwood Co. and celebrated a 25th anniversary last year.

Wilson Opens 4 New Branches
Oilfield PVF distributor Wilson has announced the opening of four new branches to meet the growing demand of Arkansas-Louisiana-Texas and Central U.S. Energy Customers. Locations in Dilley, TX, Oklahoma City and Kennedy, TX will all serve the Central/Mid-Continent U.S. and the new Center, TX location will support Ark-La-Tex.

Webb Div. Acquires CEC
Kentrol/Sevco , a division of F.W. Webb Company, has acquired Control Equipment Corp. (CEC) of Cazenovia, NY. CEC is a major supplier of automated and control valves to industries in the upstate NY market. CEC also brings enhanced service capabilities such as field and shop repair for control and relief valves. Along with their direct manufacturer support, CEC will be the technical support for F.W. Webb across their marketing region.

Newmans Joint Ventures With Cameron
Newmans' ownership has formed a joint venture with Cameron, the world's largest valve manufacturer, to jointly market and manufacture branded products for downstream solutions. The affiliation with Cameron will expose Newmans to markets where Cameron has established itself as the industry leader and historically not been part of Newmans' customer base.

Pipe Mfgers. Claim Chinese Dodge Duties
Attorney Roger Schagrin, who represents the Committee on Pipe and Tube Imports, has charged that Chinese pipe and tube producers are evading duties on their imports into the U.S., in some cases by falsifying the points of origin on the shipments. U.S. manufacturers have brought the allegations to the attention of U.S. Customs authorities, who say they are looking into the reported violations, said Schagrin. "They're doing it mostly in standard pipe and we've seen it in some mechanical tubing but also energy and oil country tubular goods," said Barry Zekelman, CEO of John Maneely Co.. "It's really widespread."

George Adams Heads OCTG Sales For TMK IPSCO
TMK IPSCO announced the appointment of George Adams as director of sales - OCTG - Americas. Based in Houston, Adams has over 30 years of sales and operational management experience in all facets of the oil and gas industry. Most recently he served British Petroleum (BP) as materials manager for Gulf of Mexico Exploration and Production.

Grainger Hosts 4,000 MRO Customers
Grainger's 2010 Total MRO Solutions National Customer event Jan. 17-22 in Orlando drew more than 4,000 MRO personnel. More than 2,000 of the distributor's commercial customers attended the event Jan. 17-19, which also consisted of a trade show with more than 400 of its manufacturer suppliers. Grainger repeated the event again on Jan. 20-22 for a second set of customers.

IPD Welcomes New Leadership
The American Supply Association's IPD Executive Council named Bob Arison (photo) its vice chairman. Arison is senior vice president and COO of All Tex Pipe & Supply, Dallas. The IPD also welcomed Craig Geers from J.O. Galloup Co. in Battle Creek, MI to serve on the Council.

Victaulic Names New Marketing/Communication Director
Victaulic announced that Eric Luftig has joined the company as director of marketing and communications. In addition to serving as a company spokesperson, Luftig will direct integrated marketing efforts in key markets. Before joining Victaulic, Luftig led the sales, marketing and product management efforts for the Plastic Films Technologies Division at Scholle Materials.

Conbraco Announces New Apollo Price List
Conbraco's website announced a new price list for Apollo valves will be coming out on Feb. 22.

ITC Reschedules Drill Pipe Vote
Excessive snowfall in Washington closed federal offices earlier this week and caused the International Trade Commission to  postpone its vote in its preliminary phase antidumping and countervailing duty investigations on Drill Pipe from China (currently scheduled for Friday, February 12, 2010, at 11 a.m.) to Friday, February 19, 2010, at 11 a.m. (the following Friday).

Federal Tax Dollars Used
To Sue The Federal Government

Yes, you really should read this, but only if you don't have a high blood pressure condition. Because this story about how your tax dollars go to subsidize environmental lawyers is bound to make some blood boil.

BEST SELLERS
for 2009

Piping Databook - $112.95
Whether it's the thermal conductivity of insulation materials or a conversion factor for viscosity, sizes and types of metallic or nonmetallic pipe or fitting dimensions, manufacturers' names or that elusive bit of terminology, the Piping Databook will spare you hours of frustrating fact-hunting. Follow this link for a complete description.

Pocket Guide to Flanges, Fittings, and Piping Data - $60.95
Packed with pictures, definitions, and descriptions of ANSI and API piping materials, such as flanges, fittings, bolts, gaskets, and required wrench sizes. It contains basic information and data to answer common questions that arise in materials handling, pipe fitting, and engineering.  Follow this link for a complete description. 

College of Product Knowledge CD - NOW $89.85
The Best-Read, most highly acclaimed product training series ever published in the plumbing industry has been made available to fill the gaping hole in the plumbing industry's knowledge training.  The College of Product Knowledge  is ideal for wholesalers, manufacturers, agents, designers, contractors, technicians, engineers, architects and other pros that need to understand a variety of plumbing systems and components. Follow this link for a complete description.

History of Plumbing CD -- Sponsored by American Standard - $35.00
PM magazine's wildly popular History of Plumbing Series is available on CD-ROM. History articles cover informative topics such as ancient plumbing, water-borne diseases, early-American innovation, the history of hydronic heating, and more! Follow this link for a complete description.

Visit AECStore.com to view all of our technical resources, CDs and DVDs.

Tech Tip #40 by Gregg Marshall
To help you make the most of the Digital Age.

Keeping Track of Your Expenses

If you travel for business, whether you own the company or work for someone else, you have to keep track of your expenses. If you are the owner, that "boss" called the Internal Revenue Service is likely to ask for your travel and entertainment expense documentation. If you work for a company, they'll want an expense report before reimbursing you for your expenditures.

Keeping track of expenses is a royal pain. For years I used an envelope and when I got home, or on the plane ride home, I'd sort the receipts and enter the results into a spreadsheet. If I lost my receipt, I'd usually never get reimbursed since I didn't remember to put it on the spreadsheet. And, of course, some of the thermal cash register receipts had been baked in a rental car, making them almost unreadable.

There really is a better way.  I ran into a program called Neat Receipts (www.neatreceipts.com) that comes with a nice portable sheet fed scanner that can take receipts, documents to save, even business cards. It seemed like total overkill that the program installed a full runtime Microsoft SQL database, but what the program can do is worth the overhead.

If you scan a receipt, say from Office Depot, it keeps the image for the IRS. It then converts the image to text using optical character recognition. Then, knowing the receipt is from Office Depot (because it recognizes the name), it can automatically determine the format of the receipt and enter the right amounts for office supplies and taxes, etc.  The program seems to have a large collection of receipts it can automatically recognize so when you scan one, all the work, even down to classifying what expense category the receipt is for, is done automatically. When you get home, you can print an expense report, or export the data to another program. You can also print various reports for any period, such as the whole year, to keep in your records. 

It saves the images, so if at some future time someone (like the IRS) wants to see the receipt you can bring it up on your screen and/or print it. As I said before, the program also comes with software that can scan business cards directly into your contact management system, such as Outlook. Or you can scan documents and save the images. Why does anyone keep track of expenses any other way?

Gregg Marshall, CPMR, CSP, is president of Rep Connection Inc. He can be reached by e-mail at gmarshall@repconnection.com, or visit his LinkedIn profile at http://www.linkedin.com/in/greggmarshall .

What's The Industry Buzzing About?

• PVF Survey Documents Plunge In Business
• Barnett Names As Authorized Kohler Distributor 
• Trade Associations Need To Make People Feel Welcome 

Distribution Software Now Drives E-Commerce
DDI System has announced the release of FastWeb 2.0, a fully integrated, real-time e-commerce solution. FastWeb 2.0 provides distributors with an outstanding e-commerce interface, online catalog, order entry and customer service desk directly fed from the existing product and customer files in their distribution management software.  Customers can view account reports on current and past orders regardless of order method, email themselves invoices, and view payment status.

Eaton's Single Bag Filter Vessel
Eaton Corp. announced availability of its new Flowline II Single Bag Filter Vessel . A unique manufacturing approach has gone into the creation of a new low-cost filter vessel that includes a one-piece body design to eliminate the multiple welds typically used to fabricate bag vessel bodies. The Flowline II is available in three materials of construction: Carbon Steel, Type 304 SS, and Type 316 SS in both standard #1 and #2 bag vessel sizes.

Salt Testing & Removal Products
CHLOR*RID International  markets a line of salt testing and removal products to protect pipelines and other steel products from costly  premature failure of protective coatings.  Chlor*Rid has developed two salt testing kits, the Chlor*Ion Meter, a patent-pending hand-held digital testing device that electronically measures  chloride with an internal ion specific electrode for accurate worry-free testing (available Q2 2010) and Chlor*Test, a complete and easy-to-use system that lets even the least experienced inspector get accurate results.  Once tested, the Chlor*Rid salt removal product is then applied to remove salts.

Expanded Fisher Line Offers Cavitation Control
Emerson Process Management has expanded the line of Fisher® dirty service control valve solutions to include the NotchFlo™ DST valve (photo) and Fisher DST Trim. The line-up offers excellent cavitation control for applications known to contain entrained particulate that would damage standard trim components and can be used in the hydrocarbon, power, chemical, pulp and paper, and metals and mining industries. The Fisher NotchFlo DST valve is a multi-stage (3, 4, or 6 stage) anti-cavitation valve available in Class 300 - 1500 Globe and Class 600 - 2500 Angle (NPS of 1-8) that can be used in severe service applications. The Fisher DST Trim is a multi-stage (2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 stage) anti-cavitation trim available in Class 300 - 2500 (NPS of 1-16). Both the NotchFlo and DST are frequently used in high pressure drop applications up to 4200 psi (290 bar) in the chemical, refining, oil and gas production, and power industries.