First meeting of 2015

I woke up this morning as the city was plowing two or three inches of new, powdery snow from the street next to my house. The bright morning sun on the newly plowed street provided a scene that captures what January is like in northern Indiana.

Then I was off to the first Commissioners meeting of the new year. The agenda looked short so I expected a quick meeting. The meeting started with the commissioners voting to keep the same officers as they had last year and then proceeded to routine stuff--approving the Recorder's request to replace a worker, discussion of repairs for Animal Control, and approval of meeting requests before a pause to recognize Bill Campbell for serving 29 years as a member of the Board of Health. A picture of him with his plaque and the Commissioners should appear in the Rensselaer Republican.

There was a public hearing scheduled at 9:00 to discuss a road closing request by NIPSCO, and as everyone kept watching the clock, the Commissioners filled the time with more routine business: Community Corrections was having water problems, the Highway Department was looking at Working Well as an alternative for random drug testing, the Health Department wanted one of the pool cars located at the Annex, three appointments were made, and how Workman's Compensation might affect a volunteer policy was discussed.

At 9:00 the public hearing for the road closing that NIPSCO was requesting was re-opened--it had been continued at the December meeting because some members of the affected public were not able to attend. The representative from NIPSCO reviewed the company's reasons for wanting to close the road and then suggested the solution that I expected after the December meeting, that NIPSCO would relocate the road half a mile east, building it on NIPSCO property and then turning it over to the county. 

There were some comments from the public, but not really about the road. The Walker Township Trustee wanted a tipping fee for any fly ash brought in from the Bailey or Michigan City plants. One of the farmers who has power lines adjacent to one of this fields was upset that sometimes NIPSCO equipment went into his field and damaged crops. NIPSCO had a contingent of people there from engineers to lawyers who were ready to answer questions. I suspect that with the proposal to re-locate the road NIPSCO's request will be granted at the February meeting.

The meeting broke and I talked to several people, including some of the NIPSCO people. I had heard at an earlier meeting that they had found uses for some of the byproducts of burning coal, with the residue from some of the units being recycled and while other units had their residue put in the landfill. I asked why they could not recycle all of it. I learned that different units burn different kinds of coal. I had assumed that all the coal came from Wyoming but this was wrong. They have three different kinds of coal that they burn, including some from Illinois, and different coals and different ways of curbing emissions gives different byproducts. In addition, NIPSCO and others are very reluctant to look for new ways of recycling because of regulatory risk. Regulations can change unexpectedly and something that was permitted can suddenly not only become forbidden but may entail cleanup costs. For example, one person was asking why NIPSCO did not sell gypsum that is produced in burning coal for use by farmers as a type of fertilizer.  The answer was that they did not want to be faced with the possibility of some future regulation that would make them liable for any problems that might occur from having farmers use their gypsum on their land. 

The meeting resumed with the sheriff's concerns. The deputy who serves civil process papers was leaving and he wanted to replace him. He noted that the county collects $13 on all papers served, and those fees plus those from sheriff's sales go to the general fund. That amount roughly covers the cost of the civil process deputy. After the Commissioners approved that replacement informed them that the likely replacement would be internal, which would open a different position, a merit deputy. The Commissioners approved that replacement as well. Then he discussed a product that re-inforces glass windows so that an attack like the one on the Rensselaer Police station, in which a person smashed a window in an effort to get to the communication officer, would not occur at the jail. Then there was a discussion of the proposed upgrade to the 911 equipment. The person in charge had gone through the list of the original specifications and trimmed out those things that have never been used. As a result, the cost of the upgrade will be considerably less than the initial estimates. There was also a discussion of the ambiguity in existing law that may affect Jasper County. At present if a call from a land line in Rensselaer or DeMotte comes to the 911 center, it is automatically routed to the dispatchers at Rensselaer or DeMotte. The county considers Rensselaer and DeMotte satellite sites, but it is not clear from the existing statue exactly how they should be considered. There will be an attempt in the next legislative session to clarify the situation. (A lot of time in these meetings is spent on details like this, which is probably why so few members of the public do not attend them.)

The Commissioners' attorney said that the county has a temporary easement with the neighboring property owner that will help with the demolition of the old Johnny Rusk building. Bids for demolition will probably be opened in the February meeting. 

The remainder of the meeting--at least an hour--was spent discussing the airport. The Airport Authority wanted the county to deed the land used by the airport to the Airport Authority with a reversion clause--that in the event that the airport no longer uses the land, it reverts to the county. An alternative favored by one of the commissioners was a 99-year lease. A third alternative was a hybrid--a deed for the land occupied by the airport operations with a lease for the adjacent lands. A central issue was the rental income from the farm lands that would be involved, with a side issue that the deed would split a field that is most conveniently farmed as a single unit. After long discussion in the meeting that built on much longer discussions at previous meetings and between various parties, it was time to set a course. Commissioner Walstra moved to deed the land to the Airport Authority with the provision that in event that the land was damaged, the county could refuse any reversion and that the Airport Authority would not use any of the land as collateral for any loans. He noted that the income from the farm land would lessen the need for the Airport Authority to tax, so that in the end the public should not be affected by which entity got the farm income. Commissioner Maxwell said he preferred a lease. Commissioner Culp, who had favored a hybrid, seconded Walstra's motion, which passed with two in favor and one not voting. (It is very unusual to have a split vote.)  There then followed further discussion on details of how the contract should be formulated and what would happen to the current three-year lease to the farm land. The issue will be back for another meeting or two.

The Commissioners will continue the meeting on Tuesday, January 20 if needed.

On the way home I stopped by the Library to take a picture of the trains in their display window. The Library will have a special Family Train Day: Saturday, January 24 from 10 a.m.-3:00 p.m.  Come and enjoy model train displays, train movies and more.  All ages are welcome, registration not required.

Winter returns

We got some snow on Sunday--just a bit--but may get more tonight or tomorrow morning.

 Visibility was less than a mile on Sunday afternoon, but the skies cleared during the night so we could see the full moon.

This morning when I got up the temperature was below zero according to the city weather station. It will be a cold, wintery week.

A tour of Donaldson's (part two of two)

In part one of the Donaldson's adventure, we had walked along the storage racks to the north end of the building and then walked east to the end of the storage area.

Turning back to the south we can see the doors of the shipping bays. There are 102 of them.

In the foreground below are recycling bins. Donaldson's recycles as much as it can, thereby cutting its disposal costs. Before it began aggressive recycling, it was filling a dumpster or two each week. Now it fills a dumpster in about six months.

 Loading Dock 3 had a UPS truck backed up to it. UPS is used for very small orders. I got distracted at this station by the machine that fills the little air pillows that we all get in packages. I never knew where they came from (and never really thought about it), but they are made by a machine in the packing line. You can see the plastic on the roll, which then is pulled up and magically filled with air.

 The machines weigh and measure the package and compute the cost that UPS will charge. The cost is not printed on the box but rather recorded and electronically attached to the shipping numbers so that UPS and Donaldson's knows what the charge for each package is.

 The truck is hand packed to fill it as tightly as possible. Usually two of these trucks are filled each day.

 Below is a look from near the truck back to the line. The dimensions of the box are computed with a laser and the conveyor belt has a scale built into it.

 Most of the distribution is not done with UPS but with semis. Here is a load waiting for a truck. Each pallet may be going to a different destination. The ability of Donaldson's and the trucking companies to route these shipments efficiently, minimizing cost and transportation time, is an under-appreciated aspect of American life. We all depend on it and yet we never think about it.

 These are orders that have been delivered by pickers but have not been inspected and wrapped. Notice that each order contains different sized boxes, which means that it contains a variety of different items.

 The pallets are wrapped in plastic by machine. The pallet is set on a rotating platform and as it rotates, it is wrapped. In the early days of this center, wrapping was done manually and a wrapper would walk for several miles a day in the process of walking around pallets and wrapping them.

 This pallet below contains only one type of filter. This type of shipment is usually what is made to OEMs,

The current Donaldson's building was built in three stages, We are now in the middle stage and the reason that the pallets look so neat and uniform is that these are pallets of product arriving from the factories.

 The pickers drive around in these funny looking contraptions. They tow pallets that are filled as they complete an order. The pickers work only from the lowest level of the shelves and the items that are above that level are usually not the same as the items at the lowest level.

Another machine, one that can put pallets up on the top shelves (which is the seventh level in the newest addition).

From the south end of the building international shipments are made. Donaldson's is a world-wide company with factories and distribution centers in Europe, China, South America, and Australia (among other places). Not only are finished products that are produced in the U.S. shipped abroad, but materials that the overseas factories use are shipped from Rensselaer.

About ten trucks a day depart for overseas destinations. The trucks travel to Chicago, where the containers are put on trains for either the West or East Coast, and from there to ships. My guide pointed out special packing material to keep the load secure for a boat trip that might not always be smooth.

 Things passing through Rensselaer will end up in all parts of the world. We are part of the global economy.

At the very south end of the building recycling materials were being packed up for shipment out of the plant. Donaldson's sells metal to Rensselaer Iron and Metal--you can see one of their blue dumpsters below. They also have to dispose of damaged or outdated product, and this they give to a dealer that will shred it and sort it. I was surprised to learn that filters are like food--they have a sell-by date, which is usually about four years after manufacture.

It was a fascinating tour and I only captured some of what I saw and heard in this post. I hope that my experience lets you know a bit more about what happens in the biggest building in Rensselaer.

A tour of Donaldson's (part one of two)

A few weeks ago at the Jasper County Economic Development Organizations Christmas event I talked to two people from Donaldson's. I mentioned that I would enjoy seeing what they do and I was invited take a tour. (It is things like this that make blogging fun.) On Monday I showed up not quite sure what to expect.

Donaldson's was founded in 1915 (which means that next year will be their centennial--I hope they do something locally) by a Minnesota man who was trying to solve a problem with the early tractors. His filter was made of wire, a can, and a tee shirt, and though simple, it got the job done. From simple filters that cleaned the air, they branched out to make filters that stopped fires caused by engine sparks. The company headquarters is in Minnesota, not too far from the Mall of America, the International Airport, and Fort Snelling National Cemetery.

Donaldson's has manufacturing facilities in many states and in several foreign companies. No manufacturing is done in Rensselaer despite the fact that the Rensselaer plant is huge--over 600,000 square feet. (That is over 17 acres!) The Rensselaer plant is a distribution center.

My tour started at 2:00, and before we left the office area, which is full of cubicles, I was shown a couple of pictures that show which filter markets Donaldson's serves. One market is the filter market for large trucks. As you can see in the picture below, a truck has many filters and Donaldson's sells them all. It sells to the original equipment manufacturers as well as to those who service the vehicles and need replacement filters.

 I asked if they made car filters and was told that was not a line that they were in.

The other main market is the agriculture machinery market, their original market. Again, farm equipment needs many filters and Donaldson's supplies them.

Their biggest customer is Caterpillar.

We then entered the main part of the building, I was overwhelmed by how big it was. I kept thinking that there is no way that I can capture the size on camera. I kept thinking of the closing scene in the Raiders of the Lost Ark where the Ark is being put into some huge warehouse.

 As I was taking these pictures I was told that there were would be better places to snap pictures later.

Safety is a priority as it is in most similar plants. They had a clock showing how many days had elapsed since the last accident (and I did not photograph it).

I have no experience in the field of distribution, so I kept trying to make connections from their world to the world I understand. One of the jobs is that of a picker. A picker assembles orders. A business may want twenty or thirty products and the picker has to go through the building finding those products to assemble the order. The picker does not have to know what the product is--he or she just needs to know where it is. It would be as if you ordered ten books from the library. The librarian would get the call numbers for the books and then find them on the stacks. The titles of the books would not matter if the call numbers are known. In a similar way,  the picker does not need to know what the product is, just where to find it. And that is done with tags like the one below.

 What I thought was interesting is that the products do not live in the same spaces from week to week. Rather they are organized by how well they are selling so that the pickers' routes will be minimized. The computer revolution certainly has done a lot to make this kind of operation efficient.

Below you see the huge batteries for the fork lifts being recharged. Switching these very heavy batteries in and out of the equipment is the most dangerous job in the plant. However, it will soon be unnecessary.

The new forklifts that are replacing the old ones can be recharged faster and simply plugged in during breaks and when they are not being used. When the last of the older fork lifts is retired, this task will no longer be needed.

 Below are old forklifts that are leaving service.

All the equipment that moves things around the floor is electrical.

When we got to the north end of the building, I could not resist taking a picture in one of the overhead mirrors.

From the north end of the building we could look down the central avenue of the building, all 1500 feet of it. Vehicles going north-south in this aisle have right-of-way and the east west traffic must yield to them.

The center has about 30 million items in inventory, with 12000 stock keeping units (SKUs). It employs about 180 people and about 60 trucks come and go during a typical day. A picker needs about a month to get up to speed--there is a learning curve.

We were about to turn the corner and head south through the shipping area. But to see what is there, you will have to wait until part two of this Rensselaer adventure.

Highlights from 2014

Another year fades into history, but it had its moments.

It started with an unusually cold winter. On several bright, clear mornings displays of sundogs greeted us at dawn.

The heavy snow and subzero temperatures made driving hazardous at times. One of the casualties of the harsh weather was the Rensselaer Library, which suffered serious flooding from frozen pipes and was closed for weeks. (Posts here, here, here and here.) To make sure the problem would not reoccur, the Library had a new roof installed with several inches of insulation, so there were still posts in the summer derived from what happened in the winter.

One event that promised to be huge and caused a lot of discussion never got off the ground (so to speak), the South Shore Air Show scheduled for early July. Heavy rains made fields at Fair Oaks Farms unsuitable for parking, so the event was canceled. The threat of the event moving south of the Kankakee seems to have energized people in Lake County and next year the event will be back in Gary after a couple years absence.

I visited Fair Oaks Farms a couple times but not enough to keep up with all the things that are happening there. A new restaurant and conference center opened, along with a bakery and market. Construction began on a new Pork Education Center, which will open in a few months. (Below is a peek in the window taken a few days ago.) I am confident that 2015 will be another interesting year at FOF.

There were several construction projects that I enjoyed watching. At the I-65/SR 114 intersection a new Taco Bell opened, and posts are here and here. Rensselaer got a new solar  panel farm, though I doubt if it has generated much electricity lately with the cloudy skies we have had in December. I was hoping that they would have an open house or dedication ceremony, but they never did. (I thought that the 69K project upgrading Rensselaer's connection to NIPSCO was finished, but at the last city council meeting I learned that it was still not in operation.)

It was fun watching a new Dollar General store being built and opened (here, here, here, here, and here.) A few blocks further east the installation of a a new culvert by Brookside Park snarled truck traffic for a week or so last summer.  MacAllister began a new building just to the east of the airport, and as the year ends, it is still under construction.

The Babcock Quarry closed and for much of the year has been filling with water.

Even though no stone has been removed from the quarry for months, the company is still selling stone, though now the piles are getting pretty small.

Another of the old township schools was removed from landscape.

A highlight for almost all Rensselaerians was a state championship by the RCHS football team. It was the first state championship in any sport for Rensselaer High.

There were a couple of posts that I really enjoyed doing. One was the tour of IBEC, and another was the Dine and Discuss event.

As the year neared its end, this blog passed the 2000 post mark. When the blog reached 1000, I was able to make that post coincide with my father's 100th birthday. Unfortunately, I was not keeping close tabs on the number so I missed the opportunity to do something special for the 2000th post.