Filed under: Life Science Division, The Elements & Total Plastics | Tags: aaos annual meeting, american academy of orthopaedic surgeons, life sciences division, medical grade plastics
Total Plastics Life Sciences Division is an industry-leading materials supplier of medical grade plastics. Headquartered out of our Fort Wayne location, TPI Life Sciences reaches the orthopaedics, endoscopy, arthroscopy, cardiovascular, neurological, biomechanical, diagnostic and pharmaceutical industries.
One of our most valuable affiliations is with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS). Total Plastics Life Sciences Division has a regular presence at the AAOS annual meeting, held this year on Feb. 7-11 in San Francisco. As part of the meeting, AAOS conducts a tradeshow which will be held Feb. 8-10 at the Moscone Center. If you’re planning on attending, please pay us a visit at booth #5144. Representing TPI’s Life Sciences Division at the AAOS meeting will be Michael Kell, Business Development Manager, Teresa Parsons, Branch and Product Manager, and Michael Ulanowicz, Senior Technical Sales Manager.
TPI Life Sciences features ISO-certified facilities, USP Class VI, FDA and ISO 10993 compliant materials, complete material lot and batch traceability, laser markable products and offers worldwide shipping. Our quality material are used to manufacture medical devices, surgical instruments, and sterilization trays and containers.
If you’d like to learn more about TPI’s Life Sciences Division and our medical grade plastics, please visit Life Sciences Division Homepage.
Filed under: The Elements & Total Plastics | Tags: business, recipe, SEO, Twitter
Just a quick note after a nice, yet busy, holiday weekend. The Elements blog will be publishing three new posts as the week wraps up.
- Detailing some of Total Plastics 2012 tradeshow opportunities. Annually, we target and attend a hand full of shows and this year shouldn’t be any different. Here’s a preview of where we’re headed next.
- An introduction to @plasticssource, our world within Twitter. Despite plenty of naysayers, there is great value to the 140 character updates that this social network provides. News breaks and travels on this site like few others.
- The greatest salsa recipe ever and other holiday notes.
Filed under: The Elements & Total Plastics | Tags: Marketing, plastics, small business
Richard Davis founded Second Chance Body Armor, headquartered in Central Lake, Michigan. While many people aren’t familiar with him either professionally or personally, he is an internet sensation. He’s the guy that will shoot himself at point blank range with a handgun (with real, live ammunition) to test and demonstrate one of his bullet resistant vests. He’s a link to a YouTube video:
For 20-plus years he traveled around demonstrating his vests in this unique fashion. It’s all at once the most brilliant and most insane marketing campaign ever.
I got to know Richard, as I lived and worked in Central Lake for a couple years at the local newspaper. He was a unique individual. He had a mind of an entrepreneur and innovator. He couldn’t sit still for a minute without coming up with a new idea for Second Chance, or anything else for that matter.
Unfortunately, the company hit hard times around 2000. Richard called me one morning, requesting to do a rebuttal on a scathing story the Detroit Free Press released about Second Chance. The company was accused of knowingly producing and releasing vests made with material that proved to degrade over time. It faced numerous lawsuits which ultimately proved to sink the small company. When I arrived for the interview, I expected a very tense atmosphere, as the biggest newspaper in Michigan had levied some serious accusations against him. What I got was Richard with a deck of playing cards, ready to show me the new card game he created.
Total Plastics distributes security grade and military specification plastics. I often think about Richard when working on a piece of literature for our line of bullet resistant plastic. He’d skip the brochure, flyers, advertisements and what not, set up a security grade sheet of plastic, stand behind it to prove that it could stop a bullet. I’m not quite there yet.
Here’s a link to Total Plastics’ bullet resistant material.
I recently read a very nice piece by Tom Searcy on CBS News’ website detailing the 5 sales trends to watch for in 2012. Two of the five struck an immediate cord.
From the story:
1. Mobile drives the definition of service. Everything that you offer in the way of ordering, service requests, inventory reporting, order tracking and process notification needs to be available in real-time and mobile. Think past your portal to the mobile app. The relevance of the need is not going to be considered. If you are not offering apps or smartphone-friendly access, you will be knocked for it in the sales process. Hard.
2. Transparency, redundancy, contingency. Natural disasters in 2010 and 2011 have shaken the confidence in manufacturers in their lowest-cost provider supply chain. Floods in Thailand, tsunamis in Malaysia and Japan and hurricanes here in the U.S. have made companies wary. They want transparency in their supply chain, all the way down to the component and raw materials provider level. They want plant redundancy with geographic diversity and they want detailed, actionable and drilled disaster recovery plans. Do you have yours ready?
First, as someone that monitors our analytics and tries to stay on top of SEO, mobile devices are making more and more of an appearance and impact in and on daily business. What’s 10% today will be 20% tomorrow and 50% next week. The question, of course is, “Are our online tools translating properly to mobile devices?” You spent years developing and tailoring your message to fit various internet browsers. With no time to take breath, you must retailor them to fit a much different medium, and one that’s more rapidly evolving. As I look down my list of 2012 projects, I’m redefining many, keeping this trend in mind.
The second point Searcy makes struck a cord with me as I previously worked in the HVAC industry, which relies heavily on the Asian market. It was an everyday question, “what’s causing the delays?” The natural disasters factored in heavily, but only amplified supply chain-related issues. Simply put, the supply chain was over extended. Countless U.S. HVAC distributors entered into partnerships with Asian manufacturers, only to find their supply chain wasn’t as transparent, as well defined or as capable as they perceived. Asian manufacturer’s promises and timelines were not in line with their supplier’s capabilities. In addition, the communication barriers (language, time difference, priority levels, etc.) furthered frustrations. It didn’t cripple the industry, but it significantly reduced the competitive advantages gained from working with a overseas manufacturer.
It’s an extreme example, highlighting the Asian natural disasters, but it underscores the point that your suppliers and their supply chain are one and the same, from your prospective. Delays, shortages, errors and other factors in the supply chain are moved on to the supplier and ultimately you. Know the components and all raw material that goes into your product, where it originates and factors that went into the manufacturer selecting a particular component or raw material supplier.
For Searcy’s complete story , Click Here
Total Plastics is the complete source for wide format printing plastics. Our extensive, high-quality product line of material works in all major brand-name printers and is perfect for the variety of mediums:
- Signage
- Decals
- Posters
- Window Graphics
- Banners
- Trade Show Graphics
- Floor Graphics
- Vehicle Graphics
- Point of Purchase
- And many more
Total Plastics carries the trusted brands, offers unparalleled service, competitive prices and reliable delivery. For more information on our product selection, to receive a quote, talk to a sales professional or to place an order, call 800-721-8598 or email tpi_ri@totalplastics.com.
Total Plastics also offers over laminates that protect, enhance the look and increase the longevity of the graphics. Additionally, Total Plastics offers adhesive products that are used to join the material to rigid substrates such as styrene, EPVC, foamboard, acrylic and othes, all of which are stocked at TPI’s various branches.
Total Plastics, Inc. has 16 branches scattered along the East, Midwest and South. Not surprisingly, many of our branches reside in NFL-based cities, such as Pittsburgh, Detroit, Chicago, Indianapolis, Cleveland, New York and several others. Actually, a better way of saying that, several NFL franchises are located in TPI-based cities.
Having noticed this, I thought it offered a unique partnership opportunity for TPI and the NFL. I recently drafted a letter and submitted it to the NFL league office. My suggestion, include TPI branch stats in the box score of their NFL counterpart. For instance, last week Baltimore rushed for 146 yards, forced 2 turnovers, was 3-of-4 in red zone opportunities, sold 35 palettes of polycarbonate sheet and 1500 yards of flexible medical-grade tubing. It’s a perfect fit. Both our businesses strive on statistics.
It just makes perfect business sense and I can think of several more cross-promotional opportunities:
“New England seeks to lock up home-field advantage for the playoffs and lock down prices on all acrylic rods and tubes.’
“Pittsburgh is rolling out a new offensive set and new security-grade plastics.”
“Indianapolis is posting record highs in total sales but record lows in football wins.” [Positive spin].
No word yet from NFL league officials on if or when this partnership will launch.
Filed under: The Elements & Total Plastics | Tags: facebook, SEO, small business, social networks
The speed of business is often blamed for the general lack of interaction and communication with current customers, potential customers, suppliers and other vital relationships of your everyday business. However, the speed of business means more than just expediting transactions and shipping material faster or more efficiently. One of the vital cogs of business is interaction and communication. Unfortunately, it’s often the first thing dropped in an attempt to better streamline business processes.
The speed of interaction and communication needs to catch up with the speed of business. This is why business leaders worldwide have found great value in social networks. It allows businesses to communicate in real time with their business community and customers base, as well their industry in general, utilizing often free, heavily trafficked sites.
Simply having these resources available or carving out your domain on them doesn’t necessarily constitute “interaction.” Having a mail box doesn’t mean you’ll get mail. Having a phone doesn’t mean people will call. The business must initiate the conversation. It must do it on a regular basis and often to an unseen and unheard from audience. Eventually, the communication lines will open and interaction will be more regular as that audience finds your message engaging, provocative, helpful, resourceful and other like words Roget’s Thesaurus would suggest.
Incidentally, this post is the longest answer to the five word question, “are you guys on Facebook?”
Yes.
Filed under: Non-plastic related, Recipe | Tags: soft pretzels, comfort food, favorite recipe
Proving this blog does not need to be entirely dedicated to plastics, here’s my recipe for great soft pretzels. However, if I need to justify this blog to the boss, plastic is used somewhere in this process (plastic wrap for one) and I think I use a plastic spatula at one point during the cooking process.
Ingredients:
4 1/2 cups of bread flour
(whole wheat flour contains more gluten, which makes the pretzel more dense, more elastic. I prefer this over regular all-purpose flour. Consider rye bread vs. white bread.)
4 tbsp. of melted butter
(traditional soft pretzel recipes do not call for butter, but I include because, well, I love butter. So it is optional … but use it. 3 tbsp. will go into dough, save approx. 1 tbsp. to brush over top of finished pretzels.)
1 packet (2 1/4 tsp.) of yeast
1 1/2 cups of hot water (approx. 110˚)
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tsp. salt
8 cups of boiling water
3/4 cup of baking soda
Kosher salt to sprinkle over top of formed, but uncooked, pretzels.
Instructions:
Combine hot water, salt, sugar into large mixing bowl. Stir until thoroughly combined. Add yeast, give a quick stir and let sit for 10 minutes. Yeast will foam on surface, mixture should smell a little like beer (don’t drink it, it’s not beer).
It’s easiest to use a mixer with a dough hook at this point. If you don’t have one, no problem, simply mix by hand (just requires a little more effort). Turn mixer on low and slowly incorporate the flour and three tbsp. of melted butter. Once it’s completely incorporated, turn mixer up to medium and let it further kneed the dough, 5 to 10 minutes. The more you kneed it, the chewier the pretzel (consider pie crust vs. pizza crust). I generally take it out of the bowl and kneed it by hand for a few minutes as well. Grease the bowl, place dough back in and cover with plastics wrap. Let it sit for at least an hour. It should double in size.
Once your dough is ready, preheat your oven to 425˚ and also bring 8 cups of water to a boil. Once the water comes to a boil, reduce heat to simmer and toss in baking soda (careful, it’ll bubble and make a residue mess). Cut dough into 6 oz. dough balls (should get around 6 to 8 pretzels) and softly roll out into 24 inch ropes. Curl into your preferred pretzel shape (this takes practice) and dip into water/baking soda solution for 30 seconds. This provides the nice dark brown pretzel exterior (you can also use a lye solution, but I don’t typically have lye around the house … and it’s poisonous). Place on a greased cookie sheet, sprinkle with salt and bake for approximately 10 to 15 minutes. You can also brush egg whites on your pretzels before adding salt for a darker brown color, but I don’t find it necessary. Just before I pull them out of the oven, I brush them with melted butter.
I like my pretzels dipped in spicy mustard or a spicy cheese dip. If you have kids, rather than shaping them into the traditional pretzel, roll out dough and wrap it around a hot dog. Dip it in the solution and bake for 15 minutes for a “corn dog” style effect.
