Teachers from third through fifth grades came to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, NJ to learn how to become better teachers of math and science. About 2,600 teachers have attended the academy since 2005. Golfer Phil Mickelson is more than a celebrity name behind the project. According to McGurn, Mickelson has had a lifelong passion for math and science and even uses his understanding of vectors and probabilities to the advantage of his golf game.

McGurn has this to say about the future value of the academy:

Though there are few metrics about results, some outside research suggests that the training they receive is leading to increased use and frequency of math and science in the classrooms of academy alumni. Mr. Mickelson says it's a 15- to 20-year bet.

"It's hard to teach a subject when you don't feel good about it or lack confidence," [Mickelson] says. "We bring teachers on an all-expenses-paid trip… give them good instructors… treat them like professionals… by getting them excited about teaching science, we'll have more American kids excited about studying math and science."

Though 21 years have passed since the Exxon Valdez spilled its oil in Alaska, it is safe to assume that this event is known far more widely than these math and science sessions. But consider the cumulative effect of 2,600 grade school teachers changing the life direction of countless students. Consider the children who have (and will in the future) become excited about math and science because a teacher attended this program. Consider what it means to our communities and our companies when our youth become proficient in math and science, even if they never pursue a career as an engineer or scientist.

The Mickelson academy for grade school teachers is one of eight math and science programs listed on the ExxonMobil website. In terms of public good, which do you think will pay the greater reward? BP's declaration of green energy or ExxonMobil's energizing commitment to making math and science accessible to more children?

I'm guessing technology knowledge is the bigger issue for companies in the long run. People who don't understand what you do, or how you do it, can't appreciate the extraordinary efforts you take to make the stuff they consume.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

As BP demonstrated, smiley-face PR doesn't work in the long run. They are reported to have spent $200 million just in the first two years of their "Beyond Petroleum" campaign launched in 2000. Their new green logo, together with a concerted advertising and PR campaign, was aimed at transforming their public persona from oil producer (British Petroleum) to lovable provider of green energy.

The campaign won awards from the advertising industry, but even before their infamous oil slick, the company wasn't buying much love in certain sectors. Long before the mega-spill they were mocked by the public chorus for "greenwashing." A January 14, 2008 Ad Age article (BP: Coloring Public Opinion?) noted, "The ongoing campaign raises the question of whether advertising -- as much as action -- can change public perception of a corporation like BP, which is engaged in the often dirty business of finding and producing energy."

Post-spill, the BP name (and logo) have lost whatever green sheen their $200 million down payment might have bought them. Maybe in the long run BP did industry leaders a favor in teaching that industries, like people, can't buy love.

In BP's "Beyond Petroleum" Branding Strategy Became an Epic Failure (June 2, 2010) Jim Gregory wrote, "Branding is all about creating alignment of your company's business processes with its corporate culture. British Petroleum (BP) provides a case in point of a brand that got way out front of its business process and culture to produce tremendous exposure to risk."

Gregory is founder and CEO of CoreBrand, a global brand strategy and communications firm based in Stamford, Connecticut.  The risk he cites might be termed the risk of the inauthentic brand. Bloggers warned long ago that you have to be committed to establishing an authentic voice in your online communication. For corporations that commitment needs to be backed by an authentic brand. As Gregory concludes, "Understanding one's brand in relation to its business and culture is critical for allocating budgets properly. More importantly, it should be a way of life for the management of any corporation."

How do you think industry can best portray itself in an environment ranging from indifferent to uninformed to hostile when it comes to anything industrial? If your company or industry has a success story to tell, send an email to don@porwderandbulk.com. We'll share your story here.

--About the art: the artistic take on the BP logo is by "mconner74" and is one of 1,231 entries submitted to a logo contest on LogoMyWay.com.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

This wealth of practical knowledge and know-how is freely shared in white papers that can be found on corporate websites and cited in blogs and help forums. Following are a few of the white papers that have come across my web browser most recently.

Application Example: Feeding & Conveying in Polyolefin Production
This 12 page document by the K-Tron Process Group may be the most comprehensive white paper they've yet published, which is saying a lot considering the 28 other white papers available for download, covering food, pharmaceutical, chemical and the plastics industries. The carefully illustrated paper proves a complete review of the many processes available today in producing the most important polymer resins used in the world today. You can download Feeding & Conveying in Polyolefin Production here. Registration is free and gives you access to all the other white papers, spec sheets and brochures on the site. While you're there on the Polyolefin Production page, you'll also see a cool fly-through animation of feeding and conveying in the dry-end of the polyolefin process.

BlueLevel Technologies: Level Measurement and Monitoring White Papers
BlueLevel Technologies currently offers 11 white papers on their website covering a variety of topics and issues related to level measurement and monitoring.  Topics include overviews of products and technologies available for powder and bulk solids applications, industry-specific applications, and safety issues. BlueLevel Technologies' Managing Director Joe Lewis was an early advocate of publishing white papers that document a company's expertise on a particular subject and serve as educational tools. See his White Papers Are Great Tools For Assessing Vendor Expertise article that he wrote for this blog in 2005.

Hosokawa Micron Powder Systems: Powder Processing Educational Center
The Hosokawa Micron Powder Systems website provides an Educational Center where you'll find 12 technical articles on a variety of powder processing topics: 

• Advances in Powder Micronization Technology for the Pharmaceutical Industry
• Advances in Powder Processing Technologies for Chemical, Food and Mineral Applications
• Combustion Research Center Quits Milling Around, Starts Milling On-Site
• Dry Agglomeration Technology Using Bepex Roller Co
• Fluidized Bed Jet Milling for Economical Powder Processing
• Stirred Freeze Drying – 3 pages
• Homing in On the Best Size Reduction Method
• Innovative Milling & Micronization Techniques For the Pharmaceutical Industry
• Sizing Up Grinding Mills
• The Future of Freeze Drying
• Toner Tests Mill, Mix, and Classify Ingredients
• Increasing SOx removal efficiencies in Dry Sorbent Injection Systems

The white papers are PDFs and free to download. In The Future of Freeze Drying you'll find a brief history of the process, which is said to go back to the ancient Incas, who preserved food by freezing it in the winter mountains. At those high altitudes the frozen water is removed through the low vapor pressure of the water in the surrounding air. Although the process was slow,
the quality of the food remained remarkably good over time.

Malvern Instruments: Online Knowledge Base
Malvern Instruments makes you register before you can even see what they offer in their Applications Library, but if you take the time you'll be rewarded with 769 white papers. The Malvern website also offers on-demand multimedia presentations, podcasts, e-learning opportunities, user training and web seminars. In addition to English, some content is available in other languages such as German, Italian and Portuguese. You can preview one of Malvern's white papers before you take the trouble to register on their website. Go to 10 ways to Control Rheology by changing Particle Properties right here on the News Center.

A Standard by which Companies Are Judged
In a recent news release, Joe Lewis cites a 1922 white paper by Winston Churchill as the first instance of a white paper. Another source points to lengthy 19th century Blue Papers published by the British government and presented to Parliament wrapped in a blue cover. Shorter position papers were published with white rather than blue covers. Soon the name white paper became associated with any brief, well-focused background report. Americans adopted the term during World War II to apply to government and business reports.

But it wasn't until the 1990s and the growth of the Internet that white papers came to play an increasingly important role in business. For today's engineers white papers have become one of the most fruitful places to find practical process knowledge. And for those selling to process engineers, well written white papers are now a standard by which companies are judged to be serious players in the industry.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Joe said in his experience in past recessions he had seen weaker companies unable to weather the downturn get bought out by stronger companies at the bottom of the recession. On the other hand, I would hazard to guess that when you see market leaders with strong balance sheets for sale, it likely means the market is headed up. Otherwise the purchaser would not likely pay the premium such an acquisition requires.

In the following of 2010 acquisitions found on this site, you can find examples of both types of acquisitions, but there appears to be more quality companies, rather than distressed properties in the mix:

Malvern Acquires Assets of Reologica Instruments AB: The UK's Malvern Instruments Limited acquired assets of Swedish rheology company Reologica Instruments AB (Lund, Sweden), which went into "administration" on March 23, 2010. Paul Walker, Managing Director of Malvern Instruments, said, "This purchase gives Malvern access to additional technologies and intellectual property that will support the continued development of our own rheology business.”

Nederman acquires Dantherm Filtration: Sweden's Nederman Holding AB announced it has "doubled its business to become the global market leader in industrial air filtration.” Nederman acquired Dantherm Filtration, "one of the leading manufacturers of industrial air filtration equipment. Dantherm Filtration (excluding the business not taken over in France) had sales in 2009 of around SEK 980 million, a headcount of slightly over 900 and is a business area of the listed Danish Group, Dantherm A/S. The acquisition of Dantherm Filtration is in line with Nederman's strategy of acquiring businesses that complement existing products and systems in customer-focused areas. The acquisition is also in line with Nederman's strategy of expanding its customer base and their customer areas. The acquisition also continues Nederman's strategy of expanding in the value chain by selling systems and an increasing amount of aftermarket sales.”

Outotec acquires Ausmelt Ltd.: Finland's Outotec has completed acquisition of Australian listed company Ausmelt Ltd. In the transaction Ausmelt was valued at approximately AUD 50 million (EUR 31 million). "One of Outotec's strategic growth initiatives is acquisition of complementary technologies. Ausmelt has an excellent strategic fit with Outotec. This acquisition complements our technology portfolio in environmentally sound smelting technologies, and allows us to offer smaller scale copper and nickel smelters as well as solutions for ferrous metals, zinc, lead and tin concentrates, zinc bearing residues, recycling and various secondary and waste materials. We believe that within Outotec there are significant growth opportunities for the Ausmelt business," says Pertti Korhonen, President and CEO of Outotec.

Bemis acquires Alcan Packaging Food Americas: Bemis Company, Inc., a global supplier of flexible packaging and pressure sensitive label materials headquartered in Neenah, Wisconsin, announced acquisition of the Food Americas operations of Alcan Packaging, a business unit of international mining group Rio Tinto plc. Bemis has  sales of over $3.5 billion

Atlas Copco acquires Quincy Compressor: Sweden's Atlas Copco completed the acquisition of Quincy Compressor from EnPro Industries, with the exception of Quincy's Chinese operations, where regulatory approvals from local authorities are still pending. Quincy Compressor designs and manufactures reciprocating compressors, rotary screw compressors and vacuum pumps, primarily under the Quincy brand. Atlas Copco plans to further develop the Quincy brand independently, in line with the Group's brand portfolio strategy. The acquired business had revenues in 2009 of MUSD 125 (MSEK 900) and an operating profit margin of approximately 7%. "I am pleased that we have obtained the approvals in the United States and can now move forward to further develop the Quincy business,” says Stephan Kuhn, President of Atlas Copco's business area Compressor Technique.

ATEC Steel acquires new Manufacturing Plant: Tank Connection Affiliate Group (TCAG) announced that their affiliate company, ATEC Steel has acquired a 60,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility in Baxter Springs, KS. ATEC Steel is an industry leader in field-weld tank fabrication, specialty steel construction and field construction services in North America. ATEC products and services are routinely specified in the power, petroleum, water and wastewater, minerals and mining industries. Tank Connection and ATEC Steel are vertically integrated companies. Starting with steel procurement at the mill and finishing with construction services in the field, all value-added design, manufacturing, project management, system integration and field installation services are performed by company personnel. "While other companies have been scaling back, we are investing in the future of U.S. manufactured storage products,” stated Noel Garrett, president of ATEC Steel.

Bucyrus to acquire Mining Division of Terex: US company Bucyrus International, Inc. announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the mining equipment business of Terex Corporation for US$1.3 billion in cash. Bucyrus will offer a comprehensive product portfolio comprised of walking draglines, electric rope shovels, hydraulic excavators, off-the-highway haul trucks, highwall miners, underground longwall, room and pillar and transport machinery and a full line of drills and belt systems for all mining applications. "We are extremely excited about acquiring Terex Mining and we believe that this is a unique opportunity to build an even stronger company for our customers, employees and shareholders,” said Tim Sullivan, CEO of Bucyrus.The company says that as a result of the transaction, Bucyrus will double its addressable market from roughly US$15 billion to over US$30 billion and create a team of approximately 10,000 people in nearly 100 locations around the world.

Hillenbrand acquires K-Tron International: Hillenbrand, Inc., headquarted in Batesville, IN, acquired K-Tron International, Inc. for $150 per share in cash. This price represents a 32.1 percent premium over the closing price of K-Tron's stock on January 8, 2010, and a 38.6 percent premium over the 20-day average closing stock price. K-Tron will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of Hillenbrand. "Although K-Tron's products differ from ours, we are both manufacturing companies that share similar processes and core operational values,” said to Kenneth A. Camp, Hillenbrand's president and chief executive officer. "Like our Batesville Casket business, the K-Tron operating companies are leaders in their industries and have highly effective executive management teams. K-Tron has a strong track record of delivering superior financial performance and creating significant shareholder value.” Hillenbrand, Inc. is the holding company for Batesville Casket Company, a leader in the North American death care industry through the sale of funeral services products, including burial caskets, cremation caskets, containers and urns, selection room display fixturing, and other personalization and memorialization products. K-Tron is a recognized leader in the design, production, marketing and servicing of material handling equipment and systems. The company serves many different industrial markets through two separate business lines. The Process Group focuses primarily on feeding and pneumatic conveying equipment, doing business under two main brands: K-Tron Feeders and K-Tron Premier. The Size Reduction Group concentrates on size reduction equipment, conveying systems and screening equipment, operating under three brands: Pennsylvania Crusher, Gundlach and Jeffrey Rader.

FLSmidth acquires Summit Valley Equip & Engineering: FLSmidth (Copenhagen, Denmark) has acquired the assets of Summit Valley Equipment & Engineering, located in Salt Lake City in Utah, USA. Summit Valley Equipment & Engineering (SVEE) designs and fabricates modular plants and equipment used for the extraction of gold and silver. This includes the industry's highest capacity electrowinning cell used in precious metals recovery. "With the acquisition of SVEE FLSmidth adds unique refining expertise to our existing minerals business thereby increasing our offerings to the minerals processing industries and providing a more complete flow sheet in gold and silver extraction," Group CEO Jørgen Huno Rasmussen said.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

The seminars include downloadable class notes and a self administered quiz with answer sheet. The seven-day subscription allows the purchaser to watch and review a video class as many times as needed. Classes last about 50 minutes and can be viewed online for just $39 US for a seven day subscription, a real bargain considering what most online training classes and webinars of this quality cost.

I expected that cost would be the main motivator for the growing trend in online professional training. Likely recession-driven cuts in travel and training budgets have stimulated some growth in online training, but I learned that speed and the convenience of 24/7availability seem to be the leading factors.

"The ability to get fast access to the information you need and view it on your own schedule have been a huge benefit to engineers who have taken the courses, Powder and Bulk Dot Com publisher Joe Taylor told me. "One of the best examples was an email I got just a few weeks ago from an engineer in Europe. He went to our Online Training Center to get a crash course on the options available to solve a particular bulk material flow problem and prepare himself for a presentation to management the next day."

Joe said this example of "just-in-time training" has emerged as one of the more compelling benefits of professional online training. He said lecturers are available to answer questions via email, phone and fax. "Those who attend our classes can pause the video at any time to fire off a question to us," Joe said. "Some really productive dialog has resulted." More seminars are in production. They will feature other leading industry experts and cover a wide variety of process industry operations. Current classes include:

Lecture 1:  Flow Problems - Their effects and flow patterns

Lecture 2:  Design principles for reliable flow - wall friction, flow functions, bin design parameters

Lecture 3:  Feeders, both volumetric and gravimetric - volumetric screws, belts, rotary valves, plus gravimetric & loss-in-weight feeders

Lecture 4:  Measuring bulk solids flow properties - shear testing, variables that affect properties

Lecture 5:  Particle segregation - segregation mechanisms, solutions to common problems

Lecture 6:  Flow aid devices - assistance to gravity flow, air blasters, vibration & fluidization techniques

Lecture 7:  Hopper retrofits to existing systems - cones vs. wedges, hopper liners & special inserts

Lecture 8:  Design examples - determining hopper geometries using the Jenike approach 

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Most observers instantly declared both fabulous, though a few found fault with some iPad details. You’d have to be on an extended trip to another planet to miss the news of Apple’s iPad, the long-anticipated tablet computer that may do to book, magazine and newspaper publishing what iTunes did to the music business.

The buzz on Seth’s new book is nearly as intense in the blogging/marketing world he inhabits, but the news may have missed some in the industrial world.

Seth Godin is a prolific writer with ten books and one of the longest-running, most-read and most influential blogs of all time. Many are already declaring his book Linchpin the most important book Godin has written, that it will be life changing for those who read it and world changing for the works that ensue.

This post is not a book review, or a review of Apple’s latest cool technology. It’s an alert. It’s a sign of new possibilities in the midst of all our angst over economies and policies and things that may blow up with little or no warning and we’re standing too close.

This week Steve Jobs and Apple demonstrated once again that we can still invent cool tools that are fun to use, and in the process transform whole industries. And this week Seth Godin introduced us to a Manifesto of Fabulous: a guide, a map and an energizer for how each one of us, individually and collectively can make our own fabulous things.

You can find a hint of what was to come in his new book in this brief post from his blog dated November 8, 2009. It’s titled simply "Fabulous"

This is so cool: because we only look at things we want to look at, only talk about things worth talking about, the amount of fabulous in the world continues to rise exponentially.

Even though we're at the tail end of the great recession, think about all the cool stuff in your life. Not just stuff you can buy, but experiences, works of art, innovations of all kinds... the bar has been raised for what you need to do to be noticed, and the market is responding.

Not only do I notice more fabulous, but it sure seems as though the creators of it are more engaged, dedicated and yes, joyful, than I can remember. If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do work that matters, this is it. You can't say, "but I need to make a fortune instead," because that's not happening right now. So you might as well join the people who can say, "I love doing this."

Fabulous Industrial Machines
There’s a lot of talk of our transformation from an Industrial Age to a Digital Age. In this post-industrial era, some suppose there’s little change or innovation to be found when it comes to engineering industrial equipment. Yet for those who bother to look there’s a wealth of innovation—of fabulous people designing and building fabulous equipment:

• I’ve seen fabulous digital weighing technologies designed specifically for process control. These Smart Force Transducers are developed and manufactured in Niederlenz, Switzerland, and they are just one example of how digital instruments are applied in industrial equipment.
• In an article on how innovation turbo-charges industrial companies I profiled Jim Foley in Pitman, NJ, who headed the team that developed a new material flow aid for gravimetric feeders.
• Ted Gentile, International Sales Manager at Jeffrey Rader Corporation, wrote how innovative biomass feed systems are gaining global acceptance in helping industries tap into this alternative fuel source.
• Mike Hamby, Vice President Sales & Service – NAFTA, at Gundlach Equipment Corporation wrote how a fanatical adherence to maintenance-friendly design principles takes much of the labor, cost and pain out of maintaining their roll crushers and cage mills in the field.

In every one of these examples you’ll find people who reached beyond the common to achieve results that set a new standard in industrial equipment. And in every example, there are users around the globe, who when they encounter one of these machines in the field, are saying, "fabulous." Those who buy and read Linchpin may find themselves among those riding at the top of the growing wave of fabulous that Godin sees coming.

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

The findings were presented at the 2009 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. According to Champeau, "Research has shown that mental stimulation similar to that which occurs in individuals who frequently use the Internet may affect the efficiency of cognitive processing and alter the way the brain encodes new information."

While the study focused on an older population, the researchers hope to address the impact of the Internet on younger individuals in future studies. Their goal is to identify aspects of online searching that generate the greatest levels of brain activation.

In this latest study 24 "neurologically normal volunteers" were selected between the ages of 55 and 78. Prior to the study, half the participants used the Internet daily, while the other half had very little experience. Age, educational level and gender were similar among all participants.

Study participants performed Web searches while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, which recorded subtle brain-circuitry changes experienced while browsing. After the initial brain scan, participants went home and conducted Internet searches one hour a day for a total of seven days over a two-week period.
 
In the first scan, participants with little Internet experience demonstrated brain activity in regions controlling language, reading, memory and visual abilities. A second brain scan of the same participants, after they had accomplished their Internet searches at home, demonstrated activation of these same regions, plus additional areas of the brain important for working memory and decision-making.
 
Researchers concluded that, "after Internet training at home, participants with minimal online experience displayed brain activation patterns very similar to those seen in the group of savvy Internet users — after just a brief period of time."

Prior research by the UCLA group found online search activity resulted in more than a twofold increase in brain activation for those with prior browsing knowledge, compared with those with little Internet experience. If you've been lagging in your own Internet searching, there's still hope: The new UCLA research suggests it may take just a few days for those with minimal experience to match the activity levels of those with years of experience. If you have a co-worker or supervisor who seems to be falling behind in their Internet use, you might do their brains a favor by forwarding this article to them!

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

Harvard Business Review contributing editor Bronwyn Fryer posted this interview "How Do Innovators Think? " with Professors Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen. In the Q&A interview the professors discuss the results of a six-year study in which they surveyed 3,000 creative executives and conducted an additional 500 individual interviews to discover how "Innovators' DNA" works.

The study identified five "discovery skills" that distinguish innovative leaders from all the rest:

• Associating: "a cognitive skill that allows creative people to make connections across seemingly unrelated questions, problems, or ideas."
• Questioning: "an ability to ask 'what if', 'why', and 'why not' questions that challenge the status quo and open up the bigger picture."
• Observation: "the ability to closely observe details, particularly the details of people's behavior."
• Experimentation: innovators "are always trying on new experiences and exploring new worlds."
• Networking: innovative leaders "are really good at networking with smart people who have little in common with them, but from whom they can learn"

I think one of the profound discoveries the professors made was that more people possess these skills than we recognize. Professor Dyer said, "We think there are far more discovery driven people in companies than anyone realizes. We've found that 15% of executives are deeply innovative, meaning they've invented a new product or started an innovative venture. But the problem is that even the most creative people are often careful about asking questions for fear of looking stupid, or because they know the organization won't value it."

We Need to Celebrate Invention and Innovation
One of the unanticipated satisfactions I discovered in moving from political Washington to industrial South Jersey was finding my office across the hall from K-Tron's R&D department.  You don't have to be a technology junkie to feel the positive energy coming from a creative group of engineers like this.  K-Tron is a company where a lot of its positive energy has started with invention. In fact, the company wouldn't exist as it does today if it hadn't introduced the world's first digital weigh belt feeder in 1972. 

I asked my long-time office neighbor Jim Foley to describe his process of discovery as he spearheaded one of the latest innovations to come out of the K-Tron R&D department, the new Acti-Flow material flow aid for gravimetric feeders. Getting cohesive or other difficult materials to flow from a hopper is an age-old problem for all process industries. The consequences of bridging or ratholing are especially costly in continuous feeding applications where reduced or interrupted flow can degrade product quality and even halt the process.

Before Acti-Flow, mechanical agitation provided the most reliable way to deal with material that didn't easily flow from a loss-in-weight feeder hopper. Mechanical agitation works but needs secondary motors, gear boxes, added headroom, and presents additional cleaning challenges. These downsides led Foley and his staff to ask if there is a better way.

"Vibrating the hopper is another option everyone's known about for a long time," Foley explained. "We know vibration is good. The problem is that too much vibration is bad. It compacts the material and actually promotes bridging and ratholing. Since constant vibration created more trouble than it solved, the best you could do with it was wait for a mass flow alarm and then turn on the vibrator. "

Making Smart Vibrations
It's a fascinating story, which I'll save for another time, of how Foley and his R&D engineers in Pitman, NJ and Niederlenz, Switzerland took a completely fresh look at all the ways vibration might be employed to make difficult material flow. There were a number of breakthroughs the team discovered.

The most important innovation, and the one that has lead to a pending patent, was the idea that the loss-in-weight controller could control and fine-tune how the vibrator (or any other device) interacts with the feeding system. "It's only because our loss-in-weight algorithm is so smart," Foley said, "that we can make vibration work with us--not against us."

As a result of having a smart controller to manage the vibration, Acti-Flow is able to vibrate continuously at a low-level, optimum amplitude and frequency that prevents bridging and ratholing. "The controller changes the amplitude all the time," Foley said "When material is moving well it runs at the lowest possible level of vibration."  If the controller senses a change, it adjusts the vibration right away before it becomes a problem.

"That's the beauty of it," Foley said. "It's a preventive strike: it lets you act, not react. "

Innovation Gives Life to Organizations
Invention and innovation keep a company engaged with its customers. It gives employees renewed purpose. It keeps sales people excited about their products and services. It gives existing customers and potential new customers confidence that they're dealing with a company that keeps getting better.

If it's a really cool design, or a striking innovation, invention gives us pleasure in simply perceiving the thing itself. Finally, invention gives us all hope in the future.

The Personal Innovation Imperative
You don't have to be an R&D engineer to be an inventor. You don't have to work for an engineering-oriented company to need invention. The truth is, in a global networked world where continuous innovation is sweeping across all industries, all the time, we all have to be innovators. The most important innovation we have to work on is ourselves.

What are you doing to reinvent yourself today?

This short article on leadership and personal effectiveness is aimed at organization leaders, but the benefits of positive energy apply equally to anyone who has any role on any group or team. That just about covers all of us, and I think it applies particularly well to those on engineering teams. Kanter writes:

"Some people become leaders no matter what their chosen path because their positive energy is so uplifting. Even in tough times, they always find a way. They seem to live life on their own terms even when having to comply with someone else's requirements…. Their energy makes them magnets attracting other people…. [Energy] is a form of power available to anyone in any circumstances. While inspiration is a long-term proposition, energy is necessary on a daily basis, just to keep going."

Kanter cites three key characteristics of people who are energizers:

1. A relentless focus on the bright side. "Energizers find the positive and run with it," she writes.

I don't think it's possible to be a creative pessimist. When I see engineers create new solutions to material handling problems, whether it's a whole new concept in feeder technology or a new take on an old problem such as inducing better material flow from a material that doesn't want to flow, I find a creative energy and excitement in the process that flows through the entire organization.

2. Redefining negatives as positives. Kanter writes, "Energizers are can-do people. They do not like to stay in negative territory, even when there are things that are genuinely depressing…. 'Positive thinking' and 'counting blessings' can sound like naïve cliches. But energizers are not fools…. Studies show that optimists are more likely to listen to negative information than pessimists, because they think they can do something about it."

Gundlach's Mike Hamby wrote an article recently on this blog about how the crusher company's founder turned his late night, rain-soaked experience repairing the company's first roll crushers into a commitment to easy-maintenance crusher design. More than 85 years later, every Gundlach crusher continues to be designed with easy maintenance in mind, saving customers countless hours if-not-days in downtime for routine or emergency maintenance.

3. Fast response time. Kanter holds, "Energizers don't dawdle. Energizers don't tell you all the reasons something can't be done. They just get to it…. They are very responsive to emails or phone calls, even if the fast response is that they can't respond yet…. Because they are so responsive, others go to them for information or connections. In the process, energizers get more information and a bigger personal network, which are the assets necessary for success."

The days of the lone scientist or engineer working solo for the big breakthrough are largely behind us. Today, technical solutions require technical teams with a variety of skills and knowledge. The larger your network of skilled people who know and support what you're working on, the greater you chances of success.

Kanter concludes, "The nice thing about this form of energy is that it is potentially abundant, renewable, and free. The only requirements for energizers are that they stay active, positive, responsive, and on mission."

Don Dunnington
Blog Moderator

You can see Bhatt's rock idol video here. He is an Intel fellow and the co-inventor of USB, today's standard for connecting devices to computers.

Bhatt is a good sport in playing what must have been an uncomfortable video role. But this send up of modern fan adulation does more than bring attention to one of Intel's many stellar engineers.

Intel's rock star video serves as a reminder that real people make the things that make the world a little better. And while we can't elevate every engineer--or engineering team--to the star status they deserve for their innovations, we can at least share the names of the ones we know of.

Announcing the Process Industry's Engineers Star Quest
So here's your chance to join in the nomination of our own process industry rock stars. You can nominate historical figures or contemporaries. To help get you started, here are some individuals who might qualify for star status:

Joseph Priestly (1733 – 1804): Powder and Bulk dot com publisher Joe Taylor nominated Joseph Priestly because "he's the guy who figured out oxygen and gases."

Priestly actually received a rock star's welcome when he emigrated from England to the United States in 1794. But the adulation was more for his outspoken support of the new republic than his discovery of oxygen.

According to the Chemical Heritage website, Priestly had been encouraged by Benjamin Franklin, when the later was in London, to complete his first scientific work, The History of Electricity (1767). Priestly went on to publish more than 150 works. In addition to his scientific research he was a noted English theologian, natural philosopher, educator, and political theorist.

While Priestly is credited with the discovery of oxygen (he called it "dephlogisticated air"), Carl Wilhelm Scheele and Antoine Lavoisier also hold claim to the discovery. Priestly wrote six volumes on Experiments and Observations on Different Kinds of Air.

In Birmingham, England Priestly joined the Lunar Society, a group of manufacturers, inventors, and natural philosophers who met monthly to discuss their work. The group included manufacturer Matthew Boulton, chemist and geologist James Keir, inventor and engineer James Watt, and botanist, chemist, and geologist William Withering.

Archimedes of Syracuse (c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC): Going even further back in history, my top choice for engineering rock star is Archimedes whose breakthrough screw design is still used in bulk material handling. It's the basis for the screw feeder, by far the most commonly used volumetric or gravimetric feeder found today. You can find the Archimedes screw pumping and metering liquids and bulk solids in virtually every process industry.

Archimedes wrote the earliest known explanation of the principle involved in the lever. He is said to have remarked, "Give me a place to stand, and I will move the Earth."

Archimedes designed block-and-tackle pulley systems, allowing sailors to use the principle of leverage to lift objects that would otherwise have been too heavy to move. He is also credited with improving the power and accuracy of the catapult. During the First Punic War he invented the first odometer. As a cart outfitted with the odometer moved forward, a gear mechanism dropped a ball into a container upon each mile traveled.

Archimedes was born, lived and died in the Greek city-state of Syracuse, in Sicily. Like all the early innovators, he was a generalist and is known as a Greek mathematician, physicist, inventor, and astronomer. And he was most definitely an engineer. "His name is inextricably associated with the genesis of engineering in ancient Greece," according to this profile on the website of the Technology Museum & Science Center in Thessaloniki, Greece.

Gordon E. Moore (1929 - ): Gordon E. Moore didn't invent the computer, and he can't take full credit for the microprocessor, though he and Intel co-founder Robert Noyce certainly gave it a hand. Over the years, his Intel engineers have taken a commanding lead in development of the computer chip that has become the backbone of countless products and the transformer of nearly every business and industry.

The thing that makes Moore stand out from all the others is his early recognition of just how big this chip revolution would be. In 1965, his Moore's Law predicted the trajectory of how many transistors could be placed on a computer chip. The time frame has stretched from a year, to 18 months to two years as the size and complexity of the chips have grown, but the law has held for more than 40 years. Each new generation of chips has doubled the computing power of the previous chips. As a result computing costs have been cut in half every one to two years, while speed and computational capacity have grown exponentially.

The impact of the microprocessor on the process industries cannot be overstated. Many modern processes simply would not be possible without today's digital controls and sensors. In the bulk material handing sector, just to take one example, highly accurate loss-in-weight and weigh belt feeders wouldn't be so accurate without their microprocessor controls. Digital weighing technology simply isn't possible without their onboard microprocessors.

Moore earned a bachelor's in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1950 and a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1954. For those who might say he's a chemist or a business manager, not an engineer, it should be noted that Moore is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Engineers. He serves on the board of trustees of the California Institute of Technology and received the National Medal of Technology in 1990 and the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 2002.

Who Are Your Engineering Stars?
So now it's your chance to nominate our process industry rock stars. They may be historical figures whose work we continue to build upon today. Or you may want to nominate a contemporary like Ajay Bhatt whose work is moving us toward tomorrow. Post your comment here, or send an email to don@powderandbulk.com with the subject line Engineering Stars.

Don Dunnington
Blog moderator