Hard lessons learned from the 2020 pandemic taught us that we needed to rebuild and re-establish our U.S. supply-chain ecosystem. The systemic shock to our global supply chains left us with bottlenecks, shortages and an acute awareness of our overdependence on imports.

Here is a complete list of all the feature articles – by topic – that appeared in Industrial Heating in 2020. The month each article appeared in is included. All articles are hyperlinked for your convenience.

Heating with fuel-fired burners is the most effective and cost-efficient heating method. Personnel safety, production equipment protection and maintaining production schedules are all best served by understanding safety requirements. NFPA is the consensus safety authority.

After the success of a series of virtual seminars last fall, the Industrial Heating Equipment Association (IHEA) has scheduled a virtual Safety Standards & Codes Seminar. Set for April 14-16, the seminar provides a comprehensive review of the 2019 edition of NFPA 86 Standard for Ovens and Furnaces. The agenda for the virtual seminar contains vital topics that have been adapted to an online version so attendees can still get the information they need whether they are working from home or in the office.

The TSX SmartBurner for reheating furnaces is ready to be installed in industrial plants with potentially zero carbon dioxide emissions, working in a full range of hydrogen and natural gas mixtures.

If you’re at all like me, you wonder which articles get the most attention on our website. Every year we publish around 45 feature articles, and at the end of the year we gather statistics to see which ones get the most page views. So, without further ado, here are the five most-viewed articles on www.industrialheating.com based on page views. This ranking applies only to articles published in 2020.

IHEA’s Fundamentals of Industrial Process Heating online learning course has been a successful source of high-level education to those in the industrial heat-processing industry for more than 10 years. Registration for the 2021 winter course is now open, and early registration is encouraged. Scheduled to begin January 25, the six-week class will run through March 7. The flexible online format and interactive forums with other students, along with scheduled office hours with the instructor, are just a few of the benefits of this program.

While unable to conduct their annual fall seminars in person this year, IHEA is committed to providing essential education for the industrial thermal-processing industry by gathering combustion and safety authorities to present vital content through an online platform on Nov 11-13 and Nov. 18-20.

When the 2011 edition of the industrial ovens safety standard NFPA 86 was released, safety programmable logic controllers (PLCs) were recognized as logic devices suitable for the safe operation of industrial heating equipment for the first time.

Industrial Heating, during a Q&A session at FNA 2020, announced that it will support the Reshoring Initiative with a $2,500 sponsorship. The mission of the Reshoring Initiative is to bring good, well-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States by assisting companies to more accurately assess their total cost of offshoring and to shift collective thinking from offshoring is cheaper to local reduces the total cost of ownership. As part of this new relationship, the Reshoring Initiative will provide Industrial Heating with editorial content throughout 2021.