A tour

On Wednesday night I attended an open house at Advance Auto Parts in Remington. There seemed to be more staff in the reception area than guests. I am not sure how many people saw the invitation, but I think only 25 or 30 showed up. Maybe that is all they wanted.

Advance Auto Parts built the Remington distribution center as the recession hit, so the building was empty for several years. That may a bit ironic--during the tour one of the staff members remarked that the recession was good for the auto parts business. When people postpone buying new cars, they buy more car parts. The center has been in full operation for three or four years. It is currently Jasper County's largest employer, with over 400 employees. Most of them do not reside in Jasper County. There are more employees who live in Tippecanoe County than Jasper County. It has taken the company a while to get fully staffed with a stable workforce, but they apparently are past that problem. Most of the workers work either ten-hour days Sunday through Wednesday or ten-hour days Wednesday through Saturday. The facility runs seven days a week, twenty four hours a day.

After meeting some of the managers and enjoying some snacks, most of the guests went on a tour of part of the facility. I asked several times if I could take a picture with the understanding that I would use it on a blog, and I was told each time, "Not yet." "Yet" never arrived, so I have no pictures. I wanted to get a picture that might indicate just how big the building is. Other than a sports stadium, we almost never are inside a building that has as much floor space in a single room. Their building, at 550,000 square feet, may bigger than sports stadiums.

The Donaldson's distribution center in Rensselaer is somewhat similar, and you can see pictures of that here. There was more activity in the Advance Auto Parts center, more noise, more variety in the boxes on the shelves, and more conveyor belts. I think the way that the facility operates is also quite different. Donaldson's supplies many different kinds of stores, while Advance Auto Parts supplies only their own retail stores. There are over 3000 of them nationwide, and somewhat over 400 are supplied from the Remington center, stores from Tennessee to Minnesota and Ohio to Missouri. While Donaldson's is shipping a great many of little orders to a great many stores (and places overseas), Advance Auto Parts is shipping fewer big orders to many fewer stores. The conveyor belts seem to be central to the Advance Auto Parts center. I do not recall more than a few small conveyor belts at Donaldson's.

It seemed that the workers at Advance Auto Parts did not gather together an entire order as they do at Donaldson's. Rather they seemed to be finding the parts of a shipment and putting them on a conveyor belt. The conveyor belt takes the parts to an area that reminded me of the luggage area in an airport terminal, though it was much bigger. Although there are very few pictures on the Internet of the interior of the Advanced Auto Parts distribution center (or DC as they staff refer to it), I did find one here, on the site of one of the contractors who built the center. In the lower left you can see a conveyor belt that turns and runs through some machines that read what is on each tray. As the trays are transported further, they are dumped along the brown, sloping parts. These are divided into 72 or 74 areas, each representing a store. The order for each store is then assembled and packed into large crates. I asked how often mistakes were made. I was told that the goal was 99.5% reliability, but that was hard to obtain. Sometimes smaller packages get jostled out of place while on the conveyor, and they then do not get deposited in the correct slot.

The building has either no heating/cooling or at best rudimentary heating. The machinery and vehicles provide enough heat to keep it comfortable in the winter and in the summer it can be opened enough to circulate in fresh air. All the many vehicles on the floor are battery powered, and every few hours they must be plugged in to recharge. Some of them lift twenty or thirty feet up to reach upper shelves, and in these vehicles the drivers are hooked onto a safety line. As we entered the main floor, a display said that the center had gone 41 days without an accident.

The center has its own IT department. I did not ask exactly what they did--I should have. Distribution centers depend heavily on the processing of computers. I should have asked if they write their own software or they purchase it from a vendor of distribution software. Even if they purchase the software, they would need to customize it.

I recall the tour guide saying about a million items came into and left the center every day. I think it was every day. We only saw about half of the building. As the tour ended, there was a flood of workers coming into the break room for lunch. Adjacent to the large break room was a smaller room with several dozen microwaves.

It was an interesting tour. I wish I had been allowed to take pictures, but I try to do what I am told when people are kind enough to let me see how their business operates.

Park news and more

Rensselaer now has a downtown mural. Do you know where it is?

On Monday evening the Rensselaer Park Board held a public forum in the Library. The room was changed from the large conference room to the Story Time Room because Santa came to visit kids and pulled rank. There were about twenty five people in attendance.

Various members of the Board outlined plans for soccer at the Monnett property, baseball and tee ball at Brookside Park, a trail in Bicentennial, and dog parks in Iroquois Parks. I had not heard of the walking trail in the shape of an 8 for Bicentennial, but the rest of the items have been discussed repeatedly at previous meetings.

Members of the audience asked a lot of questions, probably more about the proposed dog park than any other item. A few suggested that Iroquois might not be a good location because it floods. (I think that the fact that it floods makes it ideal--the flooding is a reason it is so little used.) One person asked what was being planned for small children and whether any discussion had been held about possible splash pads. The answer was that the Board had to prioritize and soccer and baseball seemed to be the most important right now. There apparently has been thought given to removing the baby pool at LaRue and making that end into some kind of splash park area.

Construction estimates were $400,000 for Staddon/Soccer Park, $31,000 for a walking trail in Bicentennial, and $26,000 for an Iroquois Dog Park. There are naming opportunities available. If you would like your name on a ball field, a bench, a light, a sign, pavement, or watering station, contact the Park or the Jasper Foundation. If you have the money, you can provide the name.

The library staff was probably a little unhappy because the meeting went until library closing and then some people wanted to talk a bit more.

After the meeting I asked someone who works in the USDA building if anything had been done with the canoe landing that had been planned south of SJC. I was told that the parking lot had been completed, so on Tuesday I checked it out. (It is on Mt. Calvary Road at the end of the last field before the bridge over the river.)

Here is a closer look at the rules and regulations.

The crushed-stone road curves in to a parking area.

However, the river is still another thirty or forty yards away from the parking area. There was a path worn in the Creeping Charley and the tall grass indicating that some people had used the landing.

There still is no boat ramp and the bank is about four feet high with the current water level. It would be a difficult task putting a canoe or boat in with the way the site is now.

The river has little current at the site. About a mile downstream the waters of Slough Creek and Carpenter Creek join the Iroquois, roughly doubling the flow. The river is more suitable for canoeing in Newton County than it is in Jasper. When competed, this may be a popular put-in spot.

I forgot to mention a couple items from the Commissioners meeting on Monday. A back-up generator is being installed this week at the Fase Center near DeMotte. This is a project that has been discussed in several Commissioners meetings. It will provide back up for both the Fase Center and the Sheriff's Annex (which includes the County Morgue). As a result, the Fase Center will now be able to house people in an emergency, so new policies will be drawn up.

The other item that I thought was interesting was a question during the Sheriff's presentation. One of the Commissioners, looking at the result of the jail inspection (the jail passed) noted that the census had been low this past year and he asked why. One reason that the Sheriff gave is that people can now use credit cards to provide bail.

First commissioners meeting of December

This month the County Commissioners will have two meetings. The second will be on the 21st. It is used to clean up whatever needs to be cleaned up before the end of the year.

On Monday the Commissioners held the first meeting. I arrived a few minutes late, near the beginning of the "Buried Cable" part of the agenda. The buried cable was actually a manure pipe proposal to move cow manure from a dairy farm located in the eastern part of the county to nearby fields. The discussion took about twenty minutes. The Commissioners thought that there would be other, similar requests in the future and they saw the need for county-wide specifications. However, they like the idea of the manure pipes because it reduces wear and tear on county roads.

After a few other items, there was a request for the county to release and waive their right of way for a building across the highway from the KV High School. The building is in the process of being sold and the sale would not go through without the waiver. A title search revealed that the building, constructed in 1979, overlapped county right of way by a foot or two on two sides. The Commissioners granted the release with the condition that if the building is demolished the rights would revert to the county.

The next big item was a discussion of ambulance services. First there was a presentation of whether the county should have township or a county-wide ambulance service. The presenter argued that the county would benefit financially from a county-wide service. It would reduce staff and ambulances. Most counties that have county-wide ambulance service have two ambulances stationed in one end of the county and two at the other end.

The presentation was followed by a discussion of the bids that had been opened at the last meeting. Lake Shore had the low bid, but that was for only one ambulance. Their spokesman said that they would be adding a second for hospital transfers and the second could also be used as a backup. However, the folks in attendance from Franciscan Rensselaer knew nothing about this. The issue was deferred to the December 21st meeting with the hope that the everyone would be on the same page.

After a short recess the meeting reconvened. There was a discussion about ownership of the road that NIPSCO will be constructing to replace a road that they want closed. NIPSCO wants the county to own the road, and after the discussion, the Commissioners decided that the county could do that. (Apparently the land under many county roads is not owned by the county. The county owns an easement.)

The Commissioners agreed to convert the annex north of town that houses the surveyor's office from propane to natural gas.

In what I consider the most interesting bit of information to come from the meeting, a member of the fair board announced that there will be no Fall Festival next year. Instead the Fair Board will have fireworks on July 2 with perhaps a grandstand event and a dinner.

After a few routine items, the meeting adjourned. There were a number of items of interest to parties involved at the Drainage Board meeting in the afternoon, but nothing of general interest.

Christmas parade 2015

I decided I should try to get some pictures of the set up of the Christmas Parade because taking pictures of the parade itself, with moving objects in dim light, usually does not yield good pictures. The staging area was the old Monnett School area, where most parades are organized.

4H had a float and the 4Hers were probably posing for someone else when I passed by.

Some things that are obvious when the parade is organized are usually missed when watching the parade. How many people look at what is behind the vehicles.

I am not sure if this entry was representing the SPAW or the animal shelter. My guess is the first.

Below is the completed float from CDC Resources. It had a lot of detail that was hard to see if you only saw it in the parade.

The most important ingredient in any parade is the candy. The back of the CDC Resources float had plenty of candy to give to or throw to the parade watchers.

 The Grinch was on the float for Crossroads Auctions. In the background you can see the 4H float.

 Trinity United Methodist Church has had Nativity floats for the past few years with sheep, a donkey, and a camel. They did not disappoint those who expected a repeat performance this year.

As the twilight deepened, the parade started. Near the front were fire trucks and emergency vehicles. One of the fire trucks was from Remington, which held its Christmas parade in the afternoon.

 Big Dog Rentals featured Snoopy.

I did not see the Abate float during the set up. If there was a prize for the most lights, it may have won it.

 In some of the past Christmas parades, Santa has ridden in a horse drawn carriage. This year he was on top of a fire truck.

There was a lot more, but a dozen pictures is enough for this post. (And most of my other pictures weren't very good.)

(More pictures here and here and here. Click the arrows to see all of the pictures.)

A very short art exhibit

SJC has an end-of-semester student art exhibit in the lobby of the Core Building. It runs only from Dec 2 to Dec 8. (SJC is closing the dorms on Dec 10 and reopening them on Jan 10, so the campus will be quiet and mostly locked up for a month.)

There are a lot of interesting drawings.

One class must have had an assignment to do something with a tree. There were a number of interacting or expressive trees. Here one tree is consoling another that has had its top lopped off. It is entitled, "The Unseen Pain of A Tree."

This tree drawing by another student is titled "The Observer."

There are also ceramics on display. This tea or coffee pot has a resemblance to the tree drawings.

The Art Department has its studios in Raleigh Hall, which is also home to a weight room for the athletic teams. I noticed that the weight-room part of the building has a new name on it. (The sign has probably been there for months, but I just noticed it.)