NewsWorthy

UID Seminars Offer Big Incentives in Small Classrooms

Sanitary supply distributors gear up to trade wisdom and talk trends with suppliers in other markets

The University of Industrial Distribution’s (UID) four-day conference in Birmingham, Ala., will be right after ISSA/INTERCLEAN^®-USA 2002 in Las Vegas. The ISSA show will be ending on October 17, and the UID conference starts on October 20.

ISSA’s expected attendance in Las Vegas is between 15,000 and 20,000 people. The UID averages close to 200 attendees annually.

But a number of distributors prefer the smaller educational seminars, saying that benchmarking with other industries has increased their profitability. “We started attending the UID seminars six years ago, and it’s been such a benefit to our operations that now we make sure to never miss it,” says Jim Evans, vice president of marketing for Coastwide Laboratories, Wilsonville, Ore.

The benefits that Evans refers to are a result of a different structure than that of the ISSA’s informative seminars, which are geared specifically toward sanitary supply distributors. Participants at UID come from a variety of industries — from electrical distribution markets to steel to plastics.

Jim White, manager of Morrisette Paper, Greensboro, N.C., says that smaller classrooms enable the UID to provide more in-depth teaching than other trade shows. “They share the best practices in distribution today without hiring an outside consultant,” he says.

“It’s a funny thing,” says Dr. Jay Smith, a professor of business at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and the author of the UID curriculum. “You might think that distributors from separate industries would have a difficult time communicating, but it’s really just the opposite. There’s really no sense of competition, so the attendees feel free to talk about any successes and struggles that they’ve experienced.”

Most of the best learning takes place outside of the classroom, when participants are able to network and exchange ideas informally, Smith adds. “There are a lot of times when, for example, a distributor of electrical equipment has some problem with shipping, and he’s just about come to a dead end, but a distributor from the plastics industry will share a brilliant solution about how he gets around the problem.”

Evans agrees. “It’s really essential, I think, for jan/san distributors to see what’s happening in other supply chains,” he says. “We really view it as essential, because our industry tends to be slower to experience new trends, a little behind the curve. By talking to people from other industries, we can often prepare for where jan/san products will be going in a year or two.”

The UID seminars are held on the campus of the University of Alabama-Birmingham, and the cost per attendee is $995. Participants range from top executives to lower-level managers.

“Over the past eight years, we’ve offered 195 different courses,” says Smith. “Our speakers are very current and they must go through extensive testing to show that they are able to teach effectively about distribution,” he says. “All the courses focus on industrial distribution in some way, but we have several tracks that are designed to educate different management positions.”

Participants will often jump to different tracks in order to broaden their knowledge base about such topics as executive management, inventory control, and warehousing productivity, Smith says.

“It’s not about philosophy,” he adds. “These students aren’t just sitting there and putting in their time, like some college students do. They have businesses that need to survive, so the discussion is full of on-the-ground knowledge.”

Sanitary supply distributors and members of the ISSA have had a strong presence at the UID seminars since its beginning, eight years ago. Smith says that the influx of jan/san distributors has had an influence on the curriculum. “If you would have told me eight years ago how we would be helping influencing the trends of different industries, I never would have believed it, but they keep changing and adapting.”

G-P Sells 60 Percent Interest in Unisource

Drug Abuse, Alcoholism Common In Wholesale Industry: New Kit Helps Business Owners Fight It

Alcoholism is estimated to cause 500 million lost workdays annually, resulting in lost productivity as well as injuries and even fatalities, according to statistics published by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).

Drugs are also a problem. An estimated 6.5 percent of full-time and 8.6 percent of part-time workers are illegal drug users. Alcohol, however, is still the most widely abused drug among working adults — an estimated 6.2 percent of adults working full time are heavy drinkers.

The wholesale industry’s rates of alcohol and drug abuse are higher than the average, according to the DOL statistics. Among full-time wholesaler employees between the ages of 18 and 49:

• 8 percent report illegal drug use within the past 30 days
  
  
• 15.5 percent indicate they used illegal drugs during the past year
  
  
• 10.3 percent admit to heavy alcohol abuse
  

No business is immune to effects of employees’ drug or alcohol dependencies. That’s why the Department of Labor (DOL) developed a new small-business workplace kit, “Working Partners for an Alcohol- and Drug-Free Workplace.” The kit provides resources and information to help employers create a drug and alcohol-free

Restaurant Reminds Customers to Wash

Gus Vlahos, owner of Costa’s, an upscale Greek restaurant in Chicago, has invented a way to get customers to wash their hands after using the restroom. The invention is a small electrical device — about the size of smoke detector — that emits a specially timed audio message: “Please wash your hands. Wash your hands.”

Vlahos told the Chicago Tribune that he was tired of customers not using common sense and refusing to wash their hands.

“I’ve been in the restaurant business for 40 years,” he says. “There’s one thing that always bothered me — people who don’t wash their hands. How can they ignore that? With the bacteria, with sickness, and they forget. That bothers me.”

Vlahos hopes that customers will respond to audio announcements better than they do to signs posted on restroom walls. The device has yet to enter production and does not yet have a name, but Vlahos has used it in his own restaurant.

Research: Cleaning Chemicals Disrupting Chesapeake Bay Fish

Household cleaning chemicals are the newly identified source of breeding difficulties for fish in the Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore. Previously, these problems were attributed only to endocrine disrupters resulting from large industrial pollution sites, but new research by the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI) shows that runoff of household and garden chemicals is contributing to the problem.

Scientists claim that these chemicals are disrupting the developmental and reproductive capacity of the fish by mimicking natural estrogens. Compounds in many detergents, plastics, pesticides and some medicines where shown in the study to disrupt breeding. The UMBI’s Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB) said that all the pollutants that were tested can be found in the Chesapeake Bay system.

“I would not say that it is severe enough that the population is becoming monosexed,” said John Trant, COMB associate professor. “However, because the Bay is so important as a nursery, chemical induced perturbations of the reproductive and developmental processes could lead to severe consequences.”

Aside from physiological disruption, scientists also worry that pollutants may negatively impact the behavioral patterns of the fish.

Mergers and Acquisitions

Soft Vac Corp., Silver Spring, Md., recently announced that it has formed an agreement with Clean Source Supply of San Jose, Calif. Soft Vac will provide its brand of Facility Protection Covers privately labeled for Clean Source Supply’s customer, Service By Medallion, a professional cleaning contractor, also of San Jose.

Harbour Group, St, Louis, has announced that it recently acquired Magic American Corp., Beachwood, Ohio, an independent marketer and distributor of branded specialty cleaning products. Magic American, founded in 1934, offers four distinct categories of products: Goo Gone (chewing gum and stain remover), Magic Cleaners (special hard-surface cleaners), Magic Bath (waterproofing caulk joints) and Myro caulking products (for the restroom).

News Makers

Clorox Corp., Oakland, Calif., exceeded analysts’ predictions by improving earnings by 85 percent for the fourth quarter and 1 percent for the year. Clorox stated that a newly released cleaning chemical helped to boost sales, claiming earnings of $207 million for the quarter.

The Freedonia Group, Cleveland, released a new study showing that a rising demand in the personal care markets will likely increase the demand for specialty surfactants. The report cites an increased demand for personal care wipes.

The Vacuum Cleaner Manufacturers Association (VCMA), Cleveland, recently announced that industry sales of full-size household vacuum cleaners in the second quarter of 2002 were up 4 percent from the same period last year.

John Conyers (D-Detroit), the author of the first federal legislation relating to mold damage in buildings, will speak at the Indoor Air Quality Association’s (IAQA) 2002 Annual Meeting and Exposition in Orlando, Fla., September 29 to October 2, 2002.

The Department of Labor (DOL), recently reported that U.S. employers initiated 2,041 mass layoff actions in July 2002. Each action involved at least 50 persons from a single establishment. The number of workers involved totaled 247,457. In 2001, there were 2,117 mass layoff events involving 273,807 workers.

CPAC Inc., Leicester, N.Y., a cleaning product manufacturer, recently held its annual shareholders’ meeting. The company announced that the auditing firm of Pricewaterhouse Coopers has been reappointed and all directors were reelected.

Regulatory News

Shipping Papers Must be Retained, says DOT Rule
The Department of Transportation (DOT) recently revised its hazardous materials regulation so that shippers and carriers are now required to retain a copy of each hazmat shipping paper (or an electronic image equivalent) for a period of 375 days after the date that the hazardous material is accepted by the carrier.

According to the regulation, individuals who ship or offer shipment of hazardous materials in commerce must describe the material on a shipping paper consistent with the DOT requirements. The shipping paper must accompany the hazardous materials while in transit.

The revised rule became effective August 7, 2002. The DOT says that each shipping paper must include the date of acceptance by the initial carrier (except for rail shipments). The date of the shipment waybill or bill of lading may be used in place of the date of acceptance by the initial carrier.

Companies must retain copies of shipping papers at their principle place of business, and must make the shipping paper immediately available upon request to an authorized official of a federal, state or local government.

Companies using consolidated shipping papers may retain a single copy of the shipping paper, rather than a copy of each shipment if other records contain specific information for each shipment made.

Congress to Rewrite Bankruptcy Laws
Congressional negotiators recently announced that they had reached agreement on a bill that would rewrite federal bankruptcy laws, making it more difficult for companies and individuals to escape debts through bankruptcy declaration.

The overall bankruptcy bill, which passed both houses of Congress by an overwhelming margin more than a year ago, appears destined for final approval in the House and Senate, and the White House suggested that President Bush will sign it. The House could vote on the measure as early as this month.

The bill approved by the conference committee would end the ability of millions of Americans to use the bankruptcy system to wipe out credit card bills and other loans that are not secured by homes or other assets. Many of those debts would instead have to be paid back over time.

Senator Charles Grassley (Iowa-R), who began work on the legislation in 1998, said that the agreement would “close loopholes exploited by big spenders who have the ability to repay their debts.”

A leading opponent of the bill, Senator Paul Wellstone (Minn.-D), said recently that the bill was “dastardly for consumers, especially in these economic times.”

Association News

IICRC Responds to Natural Disasters Throughout the Nation
The Institute for Inspection, Cleaning and Restoration Certification (IICRC), helped U.S. building owners recently when fires and weather disasters struck parts of the country.

With the aid of local television and newspapers, the IICRC provided credible and timely guidelines on proper restoration, especially after several floods in Indiana, Kentucky, Colorado, Arizona and Texas. Beginning with the Midwest floods, IICRC professionals made themselves available to the media, and helped get proper information to victims of water damage.

In Colorado, IICRC representatives informed readers of the “Colorado Gazette” about the necessity for smoke damage restoration for homes near the Hayman fires. Another IICRC professional detailed similar instructions to Arizona residents through the local FOX television station. In Texas, experts again helped those who had been impacted by floods resulting in water damage.

The IICRC is owned by 16 regional and international associations and is the largest non-profit registry of cleaners, inspectors and restorers serving the United States.