UniTherm News Archives - Unitherm Insulation Systems

April 3, 2015 by UniAdmin Leave a Comment

UniTherm @ NPE 2015

UniTherm has spent the last year preparing for NPE 2015 and boy what a year it has been. NPE 2015 wrapped up just last week, but we are still dealing with the aftermath. We decided to take our NPE presence one step further this year. We are a growing company, on the forefront of innovation. Just because we lead the way in our market, doesn’t mean we are going to stop moving forward. Here’s what NPE 2015 was like for us and what we got out of it.

NPE 2015 Preparation

Kendal, Danny, and Brandyn discuss literature handouts for NPE.

Before heading to NPE, we had to come up with our message and what we wanted to showcase at the conference. In the years past, we took a “see what sticks” approach, showcasing all of our products and trying to answer every question for every application. As you could expect, this became very exhausting and spread our team extremely thin. For NPE 2015, we wanted to do the exact opposite and shake things ups. We had one goal in mind: Promote and Inform customers about our standardized product lines, in this case, the UniVest® Insulation Systems line. This approach made everything much simpler and more focused. We moved forward with having our entire booth to be designed around promoting the UniVest® product line. Brochures, koozies, mock barrels, and live heated applications, everything was UNIVEST®. This more focused marketing approach allowed our entire team to be able to handle anyone and almost any questions they may have had. The simple and standardized design of the UniVest line is built for ease of use and presents a minimal learning curve for users. Literally, (as many of us put it) if you have heat, you can benefit from using UniVest®. We moved forward with this single goal in mind and put together one fantastic booth.

Show

UniTherm booth before the show opens.

For many on the UniTherm team, this was their first NPE. Some nerves were high, but we planned ahead of time to anticipate questions that could be asked and went over all of the key points of the UniVest® line. On Monday morning, we hit the ground running. Our booth was immediately swamped with attendees inquiring about our booth, our company, our products, and, of course, our T-Rex. Through the entire show, there were very few moments we had to ourselves. We had all types of questions, for a myriad of applications, and even received some that we hadn’t thought of before. We had our typical injection molders, extrusion, and blown film plastic processors interested in our jackets, but some attendees had different ideas for our jackets. Have you ever thought of heat loss in your BBQ smoker? Neither did we, but one gentleman thought our ThrowBlankets with magnets would be the perfect solution. How about insulation for marine turbine exhaust? The way it was explained to me was it’s basically a jet engine on a boat. Of course, we’d love to help with that!

We were able to generate more leads, within the first 3 days at NPE, surpassing the amount produced from an entire week’s worth of the previous years. The overall reception of our booth and products was fantastic. We ran out of handouts, our signature koozies, and 50 lbs. chiclet gum by day 4. What a good problem to have!

We also decided to expand our reach at NPE this year by doing a short video series highlighting some exhibitors at this year’s conference. Videos were produced, shot, conducted, and edited by our in-house marketing team and can be seen here:

Post-NPE 2015

NPE Leads, Leads, and More Leads.

The work doesn’t stop after the Expo ends. Once we got home, editing on the videos we shot began and came out quickly for people to see the recap of the show. We collectively took a sigh of relief we all survived the show. Now, with the great responses, leads, and business cards we received, now we have to follow up! This is where the real fun begins.

Let’s just say, this is going to take some time. It’s obvious why NPE is only every 3 years! We have some very special campaigns in the works for those who had the chance to visit us so be on the lookout!

Now, we prepare for NPE 2018. Who knows what we’ll bring to that show, but I can guarantee it will be amazing!

For more about UniTherm at NPE 2015, visit our social media pages:

Facebook

Twitter

Youtube

September 24, 2014 by UniAdmin Leave a Comment

New Shop Experience

We’ve just released our latest version of our new shop and we are excited for our customers to start using it. Shop.Unitherm.com is a little different and is much easier to use than our old shop. What we wanted most from our new store is ease of use for the customer and usability, and we think we’ve achieved that. On the store front, you can see our running specials and featured products, along with all of our product categories, and helpful links.

Ease of Use

The main goal of our new shop was to make the shopping experience easy and accessible to the customer. On our old shop, we found many customers would get lost or not know how to find what they are looking for. Now we have multiple avenues to search for what you need. Every page can be found with a couple of simple clicks. Whether you have a question or need to check out, you can get there from every page.

New Shop Features

Crucial to our design was adding a few new features to aid the customer. Some are more subtle than others, but here are a few of my favorite.

What we consider to be best new feature of the site is how easily you can find the right product for you. Each product is set into specific categories based on your needs, applications, or industry. Within each category you can set custom search perimeters to find the right size product you need. By selecting:

Diameter or Circumference
Width

You can have the exact fitting UniVest ordered in seconds. This makes our selection process even easier.

You can now also compare multiple products to be certain which is perfect for you. Selecting up to 5 items, and clicking the “compare” button will bring up a screen that will list all of the products benefits and features side-by-side for your viewing. From here you can add to cart or click an individual item for a closer look.

My Account adds the ability to return to your personal preferences and shopping history. From the My Account tab you can track your orders, change your preferences, and manage all of your information. This gives our customer the benefit of a personalized shopping experience.

My personal favorite feature is the new Wish List. The Wish List is your own personal shopping cart that you can come back to at anytime. Unsure about a product, not ready to check out, or are just making a dream Christmas List, the Wish List makes it simple to keep track of your items. Inside the Wish List page you can view products, compare, and add to cart normally. This list is saved to your customer account so it will be there next time you choose to visit.

Checking Out

Lastly (and probably most important), we felt that our check out process was a little overcomplicated and some customers had issues submitting their order. We condensed the order process down to 3 easy steps and can be completed in the matter of seconds. The checkout process becomes even easier and faster when My Account is used with the new checkout process.

Let’s Go Shopping

Enough talking about the new shop, take it for a spin, and see all our new changes for yourself. Let us know what you think and what your favorite new feature is on our Facebook & Twitter pages. Stay tuned for more exciting content soon.

New Shop Page: Shop.Unitherm.com

Facebook: facebook.com/UniTherm

Twitter: twitter.com/UniTherm

March 17, 2014 by UniAdmin Leave a Comment

Check Out Our New Website!!!

UniTherm Insulation Systems, manufacturer of insulation blankets for high temperature applications, is excited to announce the launch of its redesigned website this week at: www.unitherm.com.

The design, e-commerce software platform and infrastructure of UniTherm.com have been completely reengineered. The goal is to provide a more personalized and simplified user experience on the website and e-commerce site. The revamped site also boasts ad units and integrations that are larger, more effective, and newly optimized for mobile users. Visitors of the site can now enjoy a seamless experience across all screens — desktop, mobile and tablet.

With the launch of the e-commerce website, the company’s President, Dan Sherrill, explains that, “In today’s market the launch of a new website may not be seen as groundbreaking, but within our niche, we recognized a need for and developed an e-commerce site that provides clear-cut, detailed information (such as delivery, product care, common FAQ’s, technical specifications etc.) on every product or part we sell.”

The new website includes a clean design, with brand new content that enables customers to easily search for new products and services. It is fully integrated with the company’s social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and its blog, and has an integral customer relationship management system to ensure that UniTherm’s sales and after-service professionals are fully informed of its customers’ needs.

Furthermore, the new web site showcases UniTherm’s pioneering efforts in offering a standardized product line –including product specifications for a broad range of available sizes and levels of performance– to make it easy for customers to order our products. This product line, along with the instant quoting, has eliminated the need for each project to receive a custom estimate and allows all orders to be instantly placed and processed.

“I couldn’t be more pleased with our new website. It’s well-designed, streamlined, and easy to use – just like our products,” according to Sherrill. “Our goal was to create a website that meets the needs of both our customers, who need easy access to our information, and the UniTherm staff, who need to be able to update the content easily to keep our customers informed. What we ended up with is a web site that looks great, is loaded with features, and has the ability to grow.”

February 11, 2014 by Kendal White Leave a Comment

Different isn’t always better…but better is always different

Every business always has the same goal: to become world-class through everyday changes by meeting the needs of demanding customers who will become more demanding, all in a constantly evolving marketplace.

This can be a particularly challenging dilemma for those entrepreneurs who create businesses around high quality goods or specialized information. One way to work around this challenge is to present those goods or information as customized thereby enhancing the customer’s experience. Organizations realize they can often add value for their customers by tailoring or customizing their products to meet the special needs of individual buyers.

However, there is a limitation.

Pure customization requires starting from scratch every time you receive a new customer request. This can be time consuming and ultimately drives up the total cost of the finished product or service. Even though you want to be flexible to meet client needs, being overly customized has some serious down sides.

And this is where the incorporation of some type of standardization comes to the rescue.

At a time when we are constantly being told to value the new and the different, it may come as a shock to learn that the standard, the shared and the common can be a driving force of change. Indeed, many of the innovations that have transformed the world, including railroads, modern manufacturing and interchangeable parts, money, agriculture, containerized shipping, numbers, the Internet, even language, only succeed because of standardization.

Advantages of standardization

Manufactures:

Rationalize different varieties of products.
Decrease the volume of products in the store and also the manufacturer cost.
Improve the management and design.
Speed up the management of orders.
Facilitate the exportation and marketing of products.
Simplify purchasing management.

Consumer:

Establish quality and safety level to the service and products.
Inform to the characteristic of the products.
Make easier the comparison between the different offers

Public service:

Simplify the production of legal text.
Establish quality, environmental and safety policies.
Help to the economical development.
Facilitate the business.

One of the best-known examples of standardized mass production was the ‘Model T’ car produced in 1908 by Henry Ford. An unchanging design, standardized parts and (from 1914) a moving assembly line all helped reduce costs dramatically, from $850 in 1910 to $360 in 1916. Hence, the term Fordize: “to standardize a product and manufacture it by mass means at a price so low that the common man can afford to buy it.”

A modern day example of the power of standardization is the GSM™ mobile communication technology and its successors (3G, 4G…), truly global phenomena, in which ETSI has played a leading role. Although GSM was originally envisaged as a solution just for Europe, these technologies have been deployed worldwide. As a result, travelerstoday can communicate and use familiar services in every corner of the world – all thanks to standardization.

Without standardization these innovations may not have happened or may have not reached as many people as they have.

Standardization is not a bad thing, but like anything else when it is not used properly or with the right intent it can cause people to fear it. Don’t be afraid of standards. Use them to help you toward your creative goal. You don’t need to reinvent your process each time you have a new customer. Figure out the best systems for working with a client and use them over and over again. If you create strong standards, you actually have a better platform to generate customizable projects. If you save time and energy on the basic things, you can get your creative on where it will make the most impact.

October 10, 2013 by Kendal White Leave a Comment

All Aboard the Simplicity Train- Final Destination, Further Money Gain!

Energy efficiency, in theory, is one of the simplest ways to save money. As energy costs continue to rise, industrial industries in particular, need effective ways to reduce the amount of energy they consume. America’s manufacturing sector is the largest in the world and reducing energy waste at industrial facilities can provide huge benefits for companies by boosting industrial competitiveness while creating and retaining jobs through cost-effective energy efficiency improvements

According to the U.S. Energy Administration, estimates show that the industrial sector consumes more energy every year than any other U.S. entity. Yet, reaping savings in the industrial sector is more like a scavenger hunt thanks to the myth that energy efficiency improvements are easily attainable. Energy efficiency in this area is always more work, and it requires a good amount of experimentation.

So what makes the industrial sector so much different? Here are a few factors to consider:

Industrial environments are extremely complex and consistently changing, making predictions far more difficult to ascertain due to various factors such as weather, product variation and constantly changing schedules.
Efficiency is a relatively low priority for many industrial companies. Industrial customers are very risk-averse and will not make changes to existing processes if they could jeopardize the flow of operations.

It may seem that big problems require big solutions…

When it comes to guaranteed money savings and economical, efficient operation of a vast array of facilities, using thermal insulation is like “solid gold.” With rising energy costs and the unwanted environmental emissions accompanying lost energy, the time has definitely come for facility owners, operators and energy managers to fully take advantage of this valuable money saving, energy conserving, and emissions reducing tool.

So it all comes down to money. This makes it critical to find solutions that are easy to install and support; and offer you the most value for your money.

A major culprit across all industries is heat waste, the byproduct of inefficient technology. The more heat you lose the higher the cost, so identifying key areas for insulation can go a long way towards increasing efficiency. Equipment valves, flanges, expansion joints, and other irregular surfaces are common culprits of heat leakage. Routine system maintenance on industrial processes often involves removing insulation on pipe valves and fittings. If it is not replaced, the energy loss can be substantial.

To circumvent these issues, many industrial professionals have turn to removable/reusable insulation jackets to maximize heat retention and increase performance. The efficiency and proficiency of utilizing a removable/reusable insulation jacket, translates into improved facility and personnel protection, enhanced operational efficiency, and less energy consumption- easily making this product a no brainer for companies.

In a nutshell….

Companies need to work smarter, not just harder, in order to be successful. A company’s success should be measured by how wisely it uses energy, water, and other resources; how well it maintains a high quality of life for its people; and how smart it is in building prosperity on a sustainable foundation. Companies must become smarter about how they use existing capacity and resources in order to be productive and profitable. If not, they will be overshadowed and outpaced by other companies that are laying the foundation to prepare for future growth.

April 19, 2012 by Kendal White Leave a Comment

Exciting Awards at NPE 2012

Every three years, the world’s largest plastics expo, NPE, brings together the industry’s biggest names and brightest minds. This year’s week-long event featured 2,000 plastics suppliers on a one million square foot showroom floor and hosted design competitions, conferences, award ceremonies, and other exciting events.

A well-known organization for industry members, the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE), gives annual mold maker awards to innovators who stand out in plastics processing, and this year’s honorees were announced at NPE 2012 during the exposition’s premier technical conference ANTEC.

UniTherm’s own Barbara Arnold-Feret of Fort Worth received the Mold Designer of the Year award, and Robert Novak of Milwaukee received the Mold Maker of the Year award.

image from moldmakingtechnology.com

Barbara’s award is especially noteworthy because she is the first honoree whose career did not focus entirely on injection molding. A lifelong veteran of the plastics industry, Barbara has worked extensively in the design and manufacture of rotational molds and related tooling, and she continues to consult with processors to help improve operations throughout the industry.

UniTherm brought Barbara on board earlier this year to cover its expanding sales territory and is proud to announce her award. Her extensive industry experience and widespread network enable UniTherm to better serve plastics processors with energy-saving solutions.

We’ll be looking forward to next year’s innovators. Until then, follow our blog for other exciting industry news.

April 17, 2012 by Kendal White Leave a Comment

The New Heating System that will Radically Change the Way You Heat

Imagine a world where heat is always consistent, quick, efficient, and safe. Imagine a heating system that is 70% more efficient than the way you heat now and still safe enough to touch with bare hands. Is this some distant dream, or have we truly arrived at the future of heat technology?

At NPE 2012, UniTherm International introduced its latest product—RapidTherm, an innovative heat solution designed for plastics machinery. UniTherm has been manufacturing insulation jackets for over 20 years, but this new jacket is truly the first of its kind.

RapidTherm is unique in that it combines heating elements and insulation in one easy to use, easy to service unit. The 1-piece, removable insulation jacket includes a built-in thermal vein powerful enough to heat an entire machine. Not only is the thermal vein a more efficient heat source than traditional heater bands, but because it’s encased in high temperature insulation, it saves energy by eliminating excess heat loss.

In tests, the RapidTherm jacket heated barrels twice as fast (cutting start up time in half) and dramatically decreased energy usage. On production equipment, the new heating system

Decreased start-up time by 50%,
Cut energy usage by 70%
Kept the outer surface cool enough to comply with OSHA hot surface standards
Increased worker safety
Cut maintenance time and costs
Eliminated hot spots on the barrel heating profile
Eliminated the need for a barrel shroud

RapidTherm has proven itself as an efficient heating system and promises to liberate processors from the hassle of heater bands. “For years, we’ve known there has to be a better, more efficient way to heat machines,” explains UniTherm president Dan Sherrill. However, previous alternatives to heater bands have been plagued with problems. NPE 2012 was the perfect opportunity to unveil the new heating system, and RapidTherm sparked interest among processors looking to save time and money at their machines. It seems RapidTherm will be the solution that finally puts the heater band headache to rest.

It’s certainly an exciting time for new technology in engineering and manufacturing. Subscribe to our blog for more innovative ideas and industry updates.

February 8, 2012 by Kendal White Leave a Comment

NPE 2012—The Event of the Year, Are You Attending?

We find ourselves asking this question what seems like a hundred times every day. With less than 2 months until NPE, the buzz is really building about how this year’s show in Orlando will go and who will be attending.

There’s no doubt that for anyone in the plastics industry this is the show to attend. We’re promised more machines, more innovation, and greater access to our counterparts around the world.

It is an important show, without a doubt. And the new location certainly makes travel and accommodations more affordable than ever before. But we’re still hearing quite a bit of uncertainty from our customers and partners about making the investment to attend.

Simply put, you need to attend this show to learn about new technologies, network with your peers in the industry, find new resources, and maintain a cutting-edge on your company’s competition. We want to see you make it to the show, and so we’ve written a form letter to help you get the conversation started with your decision makers about sending you to NPE 2012. This letter includes the costs for transportation, meals, hotel, and the show itself. Just download the letter and fill in the projects and initiatives you’ll focus on benefiting through NPE. We’ll also get you into the EXPO for free—register here and save $80 with your free EXPO pass. The show begins April 2nd, so you’ll want to make your NPE plans asap.

I hope to see you at the show. Come by and see the new innovative technologies we’re working on in booth #3883!

September 22, 2011 by Kendal White Leave a Comment

Research & Development Tax Credits: More Accessible Than You Thought

Research and development tax credits provide golden, yet often overlooked, opportunities for manufacturers to recoup expenses of new product development, product changes or manufacturing process improvements. Recent changes to tax regulations and legislation have expanded these credits, making it easier for businesses to take advantage of the savings.

This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Cedar Robinson, a corporate tax consultant with more than 18 years of specialized R&D Tax credit experience. Robinson explained that businesses do not have to be a high-tech research type company to qualify for tax benefits. In fact, qualified research activities often include all phases of product upgrades, new product research and development, and product & manufacturing process upgrades to improve quality, reliability or efficiency. Most manufacturers are continuously improving production processes and efficiency as part of everyday operations and virtually all manufacturers develop new or improved products. As a result, Robinson indicated that nearly all manufacturers are eligible for the R&D Tax credit. [Read more…]

August 9, 2011 by Kendal White Leave a Comment

What’s New at UniTherm International?

2011 has been an exciting year at UniTherm International! Over the last year, we’ve taken major strides in improving our facility and R&D capabilities, strengthening marketing efforts, and broadening our representative base. We’re pleased share a sneak peak inside UniTherm HQ to show you changes we’re making to improve our products and services.

Research and Development Updates

Using state-of-the art technology and equipment, UniTherm engineers are more focused on research and development than ever before. This year we’ve rigorously tested our products’ performance which has led to the release of new and improved models of FirePro, discovered new applications for UniVest and FlexWatt and even launched a new product, SolarShell.

SolarShell is a glass-reinforced, plastic laminate that cures and hardens when exposed to UV rays. Be sure to stay tuned for future SolarShell updates, as we’ll release a series of test videos for this multipurpose product later this summer. [Read more…]