Whether captive or commercial, the heat-treat operation faces a tougher challenge for productivity/profitability than other departments of manufacturing.

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.

Messer and North Star BlueScope Steel (NSBS) entered into an agreement to increase supply of gaseous oxygen in Delta, Ohio. Messer will build a new air-separation unit (ASU) in Delta to increase oxygen supply up to 700 tons per day. NSBS produces hot-rolled coil for use in the automotive, construction, energy and manufacturing industries. The company has embarked on a $700 million expansion plan to increase its steel production from approximately 2.4 million short tons per year by adding 950,000 short tons annually.

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.

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.

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.

It is a well-known fact that too many recordable safety incidents will result in the good people from OSHA showing up to hang around and ask a lot of questions. Nobody wants to get hurt on the job. Everyone at the facility has some other place to be once their shift is over, and many employees have family waiting for them. With that being said, why would people continue to operate poorly maintained manufacturing equipment and material-handling machinery? 

Air Liquide announced a long-term supply agreement with Eastman Chemical Company to provide additional gaseous oxygen, nitrogen and syngas supporting the company’s production in Longview, Texas. Air Liquide will invest more than $160 million to build a new air-separation unit (ASU) and partial oxidation unit (POX) and modernize existing assets. With this agreement and additional production capacity of the ASU and POX, Air Liquide will supply Eastman gaseous oxygen and nitrogen, as well as syngas. The new ASU and POX will begin production in late 2021 and will be integrated into the existing facilities.

The recent pandemic forced many companies into survival mode: reducing head-count, cutting costs where possible and establishing new health and safety protocols, all while trying their best to carry on with business as usual. But what about the next crisis?