Monthly Archives: January 2015

Announcing the Winners of the 2014 McWane EHS Awards

Jan 29

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Screaming Eagle

Screaming Eagle

We are proud to announce the winners of the 2014 McWane EHS Awards which recognize McWane facilities with the best environmental, health and safety performance:

  • EHS Excellence Award (Screaming Eagle) – McWane Ductile / Provo, Utah
  • Most Improved Recordable Injury Rate-Fabrication Award – Clow Valve-Canada / St. John, New Brunswick
  • Most Improved Recordable Injury Rate-Foundry Award – M&H Valve Company / Anniston, Alabama
  • Outstanding Health & Safety Performance Award – McWane Ductile / Coshocton, Ohio
  • Outstanding Environmental Performance-Fabrication Award – Clow Valve-Canada / St. John, New Brunswick
  • Outstanding Environmental Performance-Foundry Award – Kennedy Valve Company / Elmira, New York

Congratulations to this year’s winners!

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Nighthawk Announces Release of RDG960 Mesh-Cellular Smart Grid Module for use in GE’s I-210 Meters

Jan 28

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Nighthawk announced today the release of its RDG960 advanced communications and control technology. The RDG960 offers an extension of its already released RDM960/RDL960 products and has been developed to be utilized in GE’s I-210 meters.

Nighthawk’s Cellular-Mesh technology allows utilities to take advantage of public communication infrastructure, offering advanced solutions for their most challenging problems. The RDG960 will allow utilities to take advantage of Nighthawks versatile WebConnect software platform and RF solutions, taking advantage of a range of Smart Grid functions with just the click of the mouse.

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McWane Ductile Iron Pipe Companies Join Together to Form McWane Ductile

Jan 27

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Today marks an exciting and historic change for the McWane ductile iron pipe companies. Effective immediately, McWane Cast Iron Pipe Company, Pacific States Cast Iron Pipe Company, Atlantic States Cast Iron Pipe Company, and Clow Water Systems will operate unified under the new name McWane Ductile. This consolidation reflects a united company focused on providing excellent service and quality products to our customers, while making all of the divisions recognizable as part of the McWane family of companies.

In a letter to the team, McWane Ductile Sr. Vice President, Jeff Otterstedt said,

“We will make a public announcement later today; however, it’s important to us to first share it with our valued team members — the people who work so hard each and every day to make our company successful.”

This decision wasn’t made lightly. After lengthy consideration, it became clear that while we have many significant and rich traditions that are unique to each of our divisions, we become stronger collectively as one distinct brand. And, although our name has changed, our promise to our team members, customers, and partners remains the same as we build on our nearly 100-year history of creating iron-strong utilities.

There are many good reasons for this change. Not only does it provide our North American and international customers with a uniform business experience across our operations by standardizing purchase orders and acknowledgements, terms and conditions, invoicing, RMA procedures, quotations, submittals, and most other customer service processes, but it also aligns the best practices and cultures from all of our operations under one vision. We should note that Canada Pipe, also a member of the McWane ductile iron pipe companies, will retain its name, which best reflects its unique position as the leading ductile iron pipe provider in Canada.

With this unification, we are fully committed to maintaining and continually investing in our three plants, located in Phillipsburg, New Jersey; Coshocton, Ohio; and Provo, Utah. While we’re excited to forge ahead as McWane Ductile, we understand that it can be difficult to embrace change while saying goodbye to old traditions. We hope that you’ll consider this an opportunity to bring the very best parts of your current culture to this new brand that we can all be proud to call our own.

You’ll find more information on our new website at http://www.mcwaneductile.com.

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Meet McWane: Recent Retirees

We have had several of our team member retiree from various divisions over the past month and would like to highlight them for their service!

Glen Cox 45 YearsGlen Cox, Pacific States: 45 Years

Pacific States Team members bid a fond farewell to Glen Cox at his retirement party at the beginning of the month. Glen joined the Pac States team over 45 years ago in 1968. His most recent job was in the Melding Department as the Iron Yard Crane Operator, a job he had held since 2008.

Jack Terrill 43 Years

Jack Terill, Tyler Pipe & Coupling: 43 Years

On January 9, team members at Tyler Pipe & Coupling, retirees, family, and friends came together to bid a fond farewell to Jack Terrill who was retiring after 43 years of service. Jack joined the Tyler team on December 20, 1971, and worked as a Warehouse Worker “B” in the Coupling Department at the time of his retirement.
Everyone enjoyed taking a walk down memory lane with Jack. To show Jack their appreciation, Plant Manager Bill Hoffman gave Jack a watch and a Tyler Pipe & Coupling hat.

Nelson Greenleaf 47 Years

Nelson Greenleaf, Atlantic States: 47

Atlantic States will be bidding a fond farewell to veteran team member Nelson Greenleaf in February. Nelson is retiring after almost 48 years of service! During his tenure with the company, Nelson has seen a lot of changes. In fact, the company has changed names 3 times since his arrival!
Since he started in 1968, Nelson has worked throughout the entire plant and currently holds the position of Scale House Technician. Nelson is known for saying thanks for coming in today, and the entire team will miss hearing that.
An amazing thing about Nelson is that he hasn’t been absent or late since 1995 which gives him perfect attendance for the past 20 years. Wow! He is an exceptional and dedicated employee who will truly be missed. Nelson has helped build Atlantic States to what it is today and we are thankful for all his years of service.
Nelson is looking forward to retirement so he can spend time with his family at their vacation home at the beach in Delaware. The team presented Nelson with an aerial view picture of Atlantic States signed by the entire team on the back along with $1,500 in gift cards.

Sam Wester 31 Years

Sam Wester, Amerex: 31 Years

The Amerex team bids a fond farewell to HR Manager Sam Wester who retired last week after 31 years of service. You would be hard-pressed to find somone at Amerex whomSam didn’t help or hire over the years. The team held a retirement party for Sam on Friday, January 23, at Flemings.
Everyone enjoyed the night and had lots of laughs taking a walk down memory lane with Sam.

Virgel Esteban 30 Years

Team AB&I recently bid a fond farewell to Virgel Esteban after 30 years of service as an Electrician. His send off included a luncheon with a wide variety of Chinese food, including roasted duck and chow mein.
In gratitude for his service to AB&I, Virgel was presented with a trip for two to Chicago, Illinois. He also received a gift from the Sales Team and a retirement plaque.
Thank you, Virgel. for being a dedicated member of the AB&I Team for the last 30 years. We will surely miss you and hope you enjoy your retirement as well as your time in the windy city.

We are honored to have such committed team members to dedicate life-long service to the McWane Family of Companies. We appreciate all that each of you have done and wish you all a very happy retirement. Thank you for you service!

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It’s National Pie Day!!

Jan 23

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Winter Crisp Dessert RecipeToday is National Pie Day! In honor of this delicious holiday, we’d like to offer up a warm, pie-like recipe that you’re sure to love – AND it’s quite health conscious, too (winner!).

Curling up on the couch with this dessert and a nice movie is a great way to start off the weekend. Enjoy!

Source

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Tyler Pipe Collects 1,988 Pounds of Food for Path

Tyler Pipe Donates to PATH 2014

Every year the Tyler Pipe team collects non-perishable food items for PATH (People Attempting to Help) and they try to increase the amount collected each year. We are proud to report that they increased the amount of food collected in 2014 by 474 pounds! The effort put forth by the entire team was extraordinary. The outside sales team donated Walmart gift cards to buy food for the drive, and local hourly and salaried team members brought in cases and cases of canned good daily to fill the crates. It was truly a group effort.

Tyler Pipe HR Manager Faye Pettigrew said, “I’ve been fortunate enough in my life that I never had to endure hunger; however, I’m not oblivious to the fact that hunger exists in East Texas. I can sleep well at night knowing that the Tyler Pipe team took it upon themselves to do something about hunger during the holidays and did it in a big way.”

As an added bonus, Tyler Pipe General Manager Greg Simmons wrote a check for $1.00 for every pound of food collected to PATH. They hope PATH can fill their food pantry with the necessary items to assist families in East Texas long after the holidays.

Way to go, Tyler Pipe!

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Pac States is “All In!”

Pac States All In

L – R: John Julander, Kelly Evans, & Layne Draper

 

Pacific States Plant Manager Scott Jarvis wanted to share with the rest of the team what “all in” looks like to him.

Atlantic States produces 4” TR Flex pipe and then sends it to Pacific States because they don’t have the ability to weld the rings on the spigot. Upon receipt, the Pac States team welds the rings on the spigots, but before they can do this, each bundle has to be broken down and every other pipe turned so that all of the bells face the same direction. The normal process for this was for a large forklift operator to pick up each piece of pipe and then drive around the layer and put it on the other end so the bells all lined up. It was tedious and time consuming.

Pac States team member Kelly Evans thought, “there has got to be a better way” so he came up with an idea which he shared with fellow team members Layne Draper and John Julander. Together they built a pipe separator that holds a full layer of pipe with every other pipe dropping down into grooves while the other pipe stays at a higher level. The forklift can then pick up the entire upper level of pipe in one pick followed by the entire lower level of pipe, again in one pick, to turn all of the bells in the same direction.

This one brilliant idea helped them achieve a cost per ton below $980 by significantly reducing the amount of time and fuel needed for this job! This is another example of why we need to work together to evaluate the jobs we are performing every day to insure that they are being done in the safest most efficient way.

Congratulations to the Pac States team for thinking outside the box together to come up with a better way to perform this task!

 

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AB&I Adopts Local Elementary School

Jan 15

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AB&I Adopts Local Elementary School

In 2014, AB&I adopted a local school in Oakland, California – Aspire College Academy. The school serves 280 students from kindergarten to 5th grade.

One of the first things the school needed was supplies for the teachers and books for the children. By year’s end AB&I team members had donated $1,000 in books and supplies, and Kip Wixson even gave access to his subscription to Paper Back Swap and used his credits to purchase books for the school. Aspire Principal Jessica Newburn also provided book suggestions for team members.

The teachers were ecstatic when they saw all of the supplies, and both teachers and children alike were overjoyed with the number of books donated. Kip has even applied to Paper Back Swap for the school to be on the donation list for all subscribers.

AB&I received a note from Principal Newburn:

“Happy New Year! I just wanted to extend a GIANT thank you for all the books that were donated before the holiday. Our teachers have incorporated over 40 books into their classroom libraries and have sparked some great independent reading coming into the new year already. We really appreciate your generosity!”

Some of the books donated were:

Dr. Seuss Series
– Frog and Toad Series
– Fancy Nancy Series
– Joody Moody Series
– Junie B. Jones Series
– Skippyjon Jones Series
– Eric Carle Series

Chapter Books (for older scholars)
– Magic Tree House series
– Diary of a Wimpy Kid series
– Biographies of minority leaders
– Mysterious Benedict Society Series

There was also an opportunity to provide hands-on help. Aspire has a playground in need of repair, so a group of volunteers plan to get together in February to clean up the playground, fix benches, paint, plant flowers and vegetables, and help put a net on the chain link fence.

Great job, Team AB&I! Way to give back!

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Synapse Wins 2014 M2M Evolution loT Excellence Award

Jan 14

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Synapse_Logo_GlossWe are pleased to announce that the Synapse Lighting Team has been recognized by TMC, a global, integrated media company, for their efforts and have been awarded the 2014 M2M Evolution IoT Excellence Award for the DIM-10.

The 2014 M2M Evolution IoT Excellence Award honors innovative products that support the availability of information being deduced, inferred and directly gathered from sensors, systems and anything else that is supporting better business and personal decisions.

Congratulations, Team Synapse!

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Meet McWane: Gopi Ramanathan, McWane Global

Jan 12

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Gopi RamanathanMcWane Global’s Gopi Ramanathan started working in his father’s foundry and tooling more than three decades ago, when he was still an engineering student. His dad, being the taskmaster that he was, trained Gopi in all aspects of the business. Gopi has drawn on this experience ever since.

Gopi joined the McWane team in April 2011 as Senior Vice President – McWane Global. Since then, he has helped the Pipe Group modernize plants with the latest casting machinery from China; helped launch McWane Services Private Ltd. (MSPL) in India, which provides engineering, sales, IT, software, supply chain, and quality support to the entire McWane team; assisted in the planning, design, and construction of McWane’s new Abu Dhabi plant; and, throughout, tirelessly moved from one big project to the next.

“Gopi, through dint of effort and follow through, has developed many strong connections and friendships across virtually all of McWane’s divisions,” said Mike Keel, McWane Global’s President. “Gopi has an incredible work ethic and a drive to get things done that is unsurpassed in anyone I have worked with throughout my career. He is always focused on getting results and does it the right way – working with people and encouraging them to do their best and achieve our objectives.”

Not only that, Gope is bringing the McWane Way’s commitment to strict environmental, health, and safety practices to new projects around the globe where regulatory standards and enforcement are lax. This will help McWane translate and sustain our culture of EHS excellence throughout our growing family of companies, which now extends across five continents.

“I am proud to be a part of a company with such a comprehensive EHS Management and Compliance system and culture,” said Gopi. “We’re not only meeting legal requirements, we’re meeting our own high standards no matter our location. I believe that following McWane’s strong EHS culture regardless of location is critical to the success of our business. While the cost of compliance does add to the pressure of doing business in foreign locales, that is only in the short term. Safety and reliability are forever.”

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