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9 years ago

FALL 2012

  • Text
  • Fastener
  • Fasteners
  • Products
  • Industrial
  • Manufacturing
  • Industries
  • Bolt
  • Screws
  • Rivet
  • Metric
Distributor's Link Magazine Fall Issue 2012 / VOL 35 / NO.4

70 THE DISTRIBUTOR’S

70 THE DISTRIBUTOR’S LINK Industrial Fasteners Institute 636 Oak Tree Blvd. • Independence Ohio 44131 Phone: 216.241.1482 • Fax: 216.241.5901 www.indfast.org THE BIGGEST ROI A FASTENER COMPANY CAN GET SADLY GOES UNDER EXPLOITED by Joe Greenslade Director of Engineering Technology, IFI One of the major weaknesses in the fastener industry today is the same one I found on July 15, 1970, my first day in the fastener industry. The breadth and depth of technical knowledge is woefully lacking. Training provides the best possible return on investment for fastener companies! When I started as an inside sales person in Arlington, Texas for CAMCAR, a fastener company with 1,000 employees and seven divisions, the only training available was on the job training (OJT). I sat next to a nice gentleman who was a very loyal CAMCAR employee. He taught me all about dealing with paperwork and how to do pricing. I soon learned he knew absolutely nothing about fastener technology and had no interest in learning. All of his training had been OJT. After a very short time I wanted to know why we stocked thousands of different types of fasteners. They all had a lump on one end and a wrinkle on the other, but I just knew there had to be reasons why we had so many different styles and types. I started my quest for knowledge by taking one piece out of every different part box we had in stock and I wanted to know why a user would use a pan head instead of round head or a truss head for starters. I went up the chain to the manager who ran the facility. He was also a very nice man who had 25 years of sales experience with CAMCAR. His answer to my questions was to hand me a copy of the 4th Edition of the IFI Standards Book dated 1965. In those days it was only 401 pages (1,137 pages in the 8th Edition) and just as boring reading then as it is today. I struggled through the IFI book as best I could, because I just knew there must be a reason why we had thousands of different types of screws, and my manager told me all of the answers were in there. As I came to various points in the book that were not clear to me I would take the book into the manager and ask him for specific answers to my various questions. I soon learned that he did not know much about fastener technology either and was not very interested in it. He said, “Joe, you have asked me more technical questions in the past six months than I have encountered in 25 years.” So much for the effectiveness of OJT where fastener technology is concerned. That did not stop me. I kept digging and, as I met people in the home office in Rockford, Illinois, I scrapped together a growing stock of information. After about nine months some of the executives in Rockford starting wondering who this young pain in the rear in Texas was and whether he was worth investing any time and effort into. please turn to page 231

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