Based in Arlington, Virginia, “ISEA is the trade association for companies that design, test, manufacture, and supply a wide range of personal protective equipment and personal safety equipment,” explains Senior Director of Policy Dan Glucksman.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) consists of items worn on the body such as safety glasses, hard hats, and high-visibility vests. COVID-related PPE gear includes protective garments, masks, respirators, and face shields. The personal safety equipment category covers emergency eyewash stations, shower units to wash off chemicals and contaminants, hand-held gas detectors, and the like.

ISEA has roughly eighty member companies, most of them equipment manufacturers or distributors. Members range from corporate giants like Honeywell and 3M to “small businesses and family-owned operations,” says Glucksman.

As a trade association, ISEA performs advocacy, public education, training, and writing industry standards. The association works closely with business groups, legislators, regulators, and industry standards organizations. Some of its most high-profile activity in recent years has involved the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS).

Established in the late 1990s, the Strategic National Stockpile “is a secret network of warehouses scattered across the country, each one the size of several Walmart Supercenters,” noted a November 23, 2020 article on the NPR website.

These facilities maintain medicines, medical devices, and personal protective equipment that might be in high demand during “a manmade or natural public health emergency,” says Glucksman.

A man-made emergency might entail the release of biological weapons by a terrorist group or a toxic chemical leak. Natural health emergencies include disease pandemics.

When the H1N1 virus struck in 2009, the SNS proved its worth by distributing over 85 million N95 respirators. Due to budget shortfalls and supply chain issues, however, SNS’s full inventory of N95 masks was not replenished—a situation that alarmed ISEA.

“We had mentioned to the leaders of the SNS over the years, ‘Hey, you ought to restock those respirators you gave out,’” recalls Glucksman.

This did not happen, however, and when COVID was declared a pandemic in March 2020, federal officials sheepishly admitted the SNS only contained a limited supply of respirators. Many of these respirators were either outdated or “beyond their stated shelf life,” he adds.

Hospitals were experiencing a surge of patients, and high-quality respirators were needed to prevent healthcare staff and others from getting sick. Federal authorities decided to restock the SNS as quickly as possible. SNS leaders approached ISEA and asked for help. Could association members pitch in and rapidly provide vast numbers of surgical masks and N95 respirators? Companies rose to the challenge.

“ISEA members did provide the surgical N95s, regular N95s, and some of the surgical masks, and those products were supplied to the SNS over the course of fifteen to sixteen months,” states Glucksman proudly.

With COVID still lingering, SNS officials have been working closely with ISEA staff to maintain large stocks of protective gear. The association has also been advocating for something called vendor-managed inventory. Under such a system, a manufacturer contracted by SNS to make protective equipment would arrange for a certain amount of finished product to be set aside and warehoused. Doing so would ensure a ready supply of protective and safety equipment, for when a virus will strike in the future.

Similarly, ISEA strongly supports stable funding for two federal initiatives: the Hospital Preparedness Program, designed to help hospitals cope with increased numbers of patients following emergencies and disasters, and Public Health Emergency Preparedness grants.

Over the years, the association has forged strong ties with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The two organizations signed an alliance in June 2018, to collectively disseminate information about selecting, using, maintaining, and storing personal safety and protective gear.

This year, ISEA will be assisting with an OSHA initiative aimed at raising awareness of the dangers of falling objects on worksites. The association is also involved with OSHA’s heat illness prevention campaign which emphasizes the risk of excessive heat for workers in certain sectors.

Association members will be “sharing information about various products on the market to reduce heat stress,” Glucksman says.

ISEA was founded on July 31, 1933, at the height of the Depression. The association’s original purpose was to “control and set prices for PPE, to try to help the recovery from the Great Depression,” Glucksman says.

This mission eventually expanded, to include industry advocacy and other duties. Since the 1960s, the association has also helped write industry safety standards. ISEA today is an accredited Standards Developing Organization (SDO) with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) which sets voluntary standards for products, systems, processes, and workplace equipment. Standards are updated to accommodate new developments.

ISEA works with groups made up of representatives from industry, end-user companies, academia, and other organizations. Research is conducted, discussion is had, and the product group produces a draft standard. The draft is subjected to review and public input. If deemed acceptable, the draft will eventually become an American National Standard.

Through this comprehensive, painstaking approach, the association has helped develop a wide range of ANSI standards. ANSI/ISEA 121-2018, for example, is the American National Standard for Dropped Object Prevention Solutions, and this standard will be a focus of OSHA’s campaign on the dangers of falling objects at work. ANSI/ISEA Z87.1-2020 is the American National Standard for Occupational and Educational Eye and Face Protection Devices.

The association has most recently updated ANSI/ISEA Z308.1-2021, the American National Standard—Minimum Requirements for Workplace First Aid Kits and Supplies. This standard is the benchmark for businesses required to maintain in-house first aid kits.

ISEA sits on ANSI committees covering everything from welding safety, to fall protection equipment, safety signs and colors, hearing protection, and eye and face protection. The association also has a presence on committees and sub-committees dedicated to head and respiratory protection, protective clothing, and other areas, for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), which sets global standards. It provides input for ASTM (formerly, the American Society for Testing and Materials) and the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) as well.

The association runs a training initiative for manufacturer and distributor sales and marketing staff members. The intensive, week-long Qualified Safety Sales Professional Program (QSSP) aims to educate people who sell safety equipment about common workplace hazards and ways to protect workers from those hazards. OSHA general industry regulations are outlined in detail. Companies looking to purchase safety gear can count on qualified sales representatives to have a broad knowledge of the field.

Graduates become “a partner in safety, after passing the QSSP course, rather than a peddler of safety,” states Director Marketing & External Affairs Nicole Randall.

As for the future, expect a growing emphasis on telemetry within the protective equipment sector, says Glucksman. Telemetry is the science of monitoring and transmitting data and measurements via advanced tools. Someone working in a sewer, for example, could be fitted with sensors. Data collected by the sensors would be relayed to an office or an on-site manager. The worker(s) and on-site and office staff remotely monitoring their progress can be instantly alerted if the sensors note diminishing oxygen levels or other dangerous conditions.

He thinks the public and government agencies have become more aware of the need for protective equipment in general. The COVID pandemic drove home the importance of maintaining a robust federal stockpile, a message that has filtered down to state and local levels as well. “I think states will have their own stockpiles and not rely on the federal government. I think that awareness and planning might even go down to localities and regions,” he says of the future.

COVID also raised awareness of the vulnerability of U.S. manufacturing supply chains. Relying on overseas manufacturers to make protective equipment during global public health emergencies is not ideal. ISEA is involved in federal and White House committees looking at PPE supply issues.

“There is an increased focus by the federal government and some states about production in the United States… in respiratory protection, there is robust manufacturing of N95 respirators,” Glucksman says.

“COVID put a focus on preparedness in general, especially within the U.S. government. They want to make sure we never go through an episode, [where there is] a shortage of what we need. To that end, they have made it a point to form a closer bond with ISEA and its members. Dan often hosts meetings with White House staff and ISEA members to discuss what’s going on with the COVID response and make sure [a PPE shortage] never happens again. They are looking to ISEA members to help them do that, to use their expertise as manufacturers of the equipment,” adds Randall.

The post Keeping Employees From Harm: The International Safety Equipment Association Advocates for a Safer Workplace<p class="company">The International Safety Equipment Association</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

This employee-owned, domestic manufacturer has been trusted by North Americans for its durable safety apparel for over forty years, and business is great. Based at a 50,000-square-foot facility from 1979 to present, this industry expert added an impressive 24,000-square-foot warehouse to its existing footprint and other significant improvements like more office space to support its increasing expansion.

Its people are as important as its clients, therefore, as with everything it does, safety plays a major role across its entire facility. “We make products that help workers make it home to their families safely. Our mission is to provide workers everywhere with outstanding safety products made in the USA, tested to high standards, made and sold by our employee-owners,” says Andrew Wirts, Director of Sales and Marketing.

Since its inception in 1979, the company has cultivated, with great care, a culture of excellence. Based on five clear guidelines, safety comes first, and all of its people are trained to understand and value working safely and smartly. Quality is another of its driving principles, followed by continuously improving productivity and skill through sustained effort. Reducing waste by developing and honing lean systems that work well adds foresight and economy to the system. Every effort is made to translate the benefits derived from these principles into the overall customer experience.

NASCO’s popularity appears to be soaring as it upholds the most stringent safety standards for protective apparel in a market well-stocked with cheap knock-offs. These standards include the American Society for Testing & Materials (ASTM), National Fire Protection Agency (NFPA), and International Safety Equipment Association (ISEA).

“NASCO is not only a member of these organizations, but we have a leadership role with the committees responsible for writing these standards. It is our responsibility to provide our expertise to potential customers to make sure they have the proper product to protect against their work hazards,” says Wirts.

Its most recent success is its introduction of a world-first product to serve the utilities and oil and gas industries. The fabric is “the thinnest, lightest protective rain gear possible today,” making it a global leader in worker comfort and safety in this apparel range. Both the ArcLite Air and PetroStorm ranges offer a lightweight, 5.5-ounce-per-square-yard product that protects the wearer from electric arc flashes, hydrocarbon flash fires, chemical splashes, and steam and hot liquids. Alongside this performance, the wearer’s safety is further enhanced by high roadside and night-time visibility.

To answer the growing demand for its products and make obtaining them as easy as possible for its clients and distributors, NASCO recently improved its e-commerce presence by introducing a new website. “The new site retained the resource-rich content but added new functionality to our distributors. Purchases can now be made directly from our site. Distributors can check inventory, confirm pricing, as well as gain access to all technical product information,” says Wirts.

The company is especially pleased by weathering the economic storm brought about by COVID-19 and thriving. “We needed to focus on communicating the best information we had as soon as possible. There was a lot of disinformation, even in the early moments of the pandemic. The human part of it was to ensure that everyone was safe and understood what was going on with this COVID issue,” says Todd Smith, President. When it came to business, the next step was to continue offering sufficient protection to the industries it serves.

NASCO was not led astray by the brief opportunity for short-term gains that was presented by demands for personal protective garments in the medical industry as this would ultimately have diluted its focus on its markets. Instead, the firm forged ahead, keeping its focus on its existing markets, a decision that is now producing great dividends.

“We chose to be the best company we could be for our customers who we knew would need us. We chose to communicate, to deal with the fear, and we tried to create a safe workplace, and we protected our core markets,” Smith adds.

It was during this time that the company’s leadership decided to consolidate all its smaller facilities into the one big footprint from which it works today. “There were a lot of difficulties but we did expand during COVID,” Smith says proudly.

Indeed, “NASCO has always believed in a strategy of leveraging technology to design, manufacture and market products. Early in the year 2000, NASCO became the first in our industry to launch a website,” Smith shares. “It was based on providing a digital platform to provide the market with relevant products, backed by rigorous testing and providing all that data to decision makers. In 2001, NASCO undertook the largest capital expenditure in the company’s history to install a new unit production system that allowed all cut pieces of a garment to travel together from one operator to the next. This increased capacity dramatically by allowing operators more time on task. Subsequently, after additional installations, all but one department utilizes this system,” he says.

“Furthermore, NASCO has had machines designed specifically for our manufacturing processes. Utilizing these customized machines allows one operator to do the work of what used to take three people to do.” Such improvements include a new digital cutter with integrated fabric spreading technology installed in the company’s cut, make, and sew department.

Furthermore, NASCO is employing business intelligence software that scans market trends to help it forecast the next big wave. “There is no such thing as crystal balls. We have to look for the best information [to] make decisions. So we are leveraging a type of artificial intelligence to begin that process,” Smith adds.

NASCO was founded on the bones of a well-known international tire fabricator that also manufactured rain gear. When that company left the facility where NASCO Industries, Inc. is now based, the rain gear equipment remained. “That rain gear goes back several decades. NASCO started, basically, on the ash heap of Uniroyal’s rain gear program. They were going to leave this facility and leave our small town,” says Wirts.

Instead, NASCO started manufacturing rain gear with a two-year exclusive contract committed to Uniroyal. When this contract ended, NASCO started evolving into what it is today by providing its markets with the apparel needed most.

NASCO has always been about people, becoming employee-owned in 1985. It has around one hundred dedicated team members upholding what the president calls consensus management, the antithesis of a hierarchical management system. “As employee-owners, we all share a common set of core values that makes our team special: honesty, respect, teamwork, and perseverance. Our value proposition is to reliably provide quality, safe, comfortable, and compliant protective products to our customers. We achieve this by leveraging the quality work of our employee-owners and proudly ‘Made in the USA,’” Smith says, pointing out that being on the same page makes it easier to move forward in business.

To ensure that everyone is indeed on the same proverbial page, the company regularly runs surveys to gauge the engagement levels of all working in the firm. A group of staff then works through the feedback to see whether and where change is necessary and how it can be implemented. This has proven to be a good way of gathering solid, honest information on how employees feel.

The results from embracing the feedback from these anonymous surveys are so positive that its management team sees the firm committing to this method long-term. “As an ESOP, we try to share how the company is doing at all times. We do have an annual shareholders’ meeting at the beginning of the year to recap how the prior year went and let them know what is coming in the future and what we are making. We try to keep the employees as up-to-date as possible with what is going on in the company, so there are no surprises,” says Jordan Sherman, Chief Financial Officer.

Caring also extends to its local communities as its contributions committee considers community requests for financial support. “We try to be good members of the community. So we set a budget and provide what we can when we can. When those requests come in, we see how they help the community,” says Sherman.

Looking at how the labor markets are changing and the company’s position within them, Smith cautions that the real long-term effects of COVID are yet to become evident, especially in terms of labor. He underlines NASCO’s continued commitment to employee wellbeing and job satisfaction. “We are all in competition for labor. I think the best companies will continue to survive. We consider ourselves one of the best companies. We do a lot. Our benefits to our employees are outstanding,” he says. With such unwavering commitment to everyone in its sphere, there is no doubt that NASCO Industries, Inc. remains on a winning streak.

The post Proudly American Safety Apparel<p class="company">NASCO Industries, Inc.</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

RONCO primarily serves the Canadian market while maintaining teams in China, Bangladesh, Malaysia and other manufacturing facilities in the east. The company works around the clock at peak efficiency and has successfully leveraged its position in the market to retain customers. President and Chief Executive Officer Ron Pecchioli defines the company’s identity today as protecting the “head, hand, and body,” of workers when it comes to working safely in today’s workspaces. In addition to workers, the company is also committed to protecting the end-user as well as the processes and applications themselves.

Quality has always been a cornerstone of the company’s business approach. Ron credits this focus to the employees and the work ethic they bring. The workforce provides a consistent quality product and aims to bring it to Canada and worldwide in a cost-effective manner.

Director of Marketing and Global Quality Vani Kshattriya adds that the work ethic is what helps separate RONCO from the pack. “A lot of other companies in PPE will undercut distributors or sells to users directly… We stick to a business model where we create customer partnerships because of the ethics and integrity in the way we do our business.”

This approach has led to long-lasting relationships with its clients, with some relationships even as old as the company itself. Vani praises the work of the company’s overseas teams as they frequently aid in transforming PPE solution ideas into physical products. The workforce worldwide is also responsible for fast and efficient response times, a key reason why customers keep coming back.

The company’s identity also lies in how it is regarded as one of the leaders in product innovation and development in PPE, a role it secures by finding existing gaps in the market and meeting those demands. RONCO keeps close ties with its distributors and focuses on the relationships cultivated with them; however, the market gaps are understood through communication with end-users, as the company works toward finding solutions that best serve all involved.

While Ron feels that every industry needs PPE solutions, he identifies the healthcare, food, and industrial markets as three that could especially benefit from protecting workers, users, and the product/process itself. From food workers using hairnets to factory workers using gloves, RONCO provides simpler products for everyday work and highly specialized products for more complex applications like pharmaceutical, hospital, or automotive manufacturing workplaces.

Indeed, the company has seen a marked boost in PPE use across the board since the advent of COVID-19 in 2020, with many non-traditional markets seeking solutions and customers at all levels becoming much more educated in using PPE.

RONCO is a partner in McMaster University’s Center of Excellence in Protective Equipment Materials (CEPEM), a collaborative effort to bring innovation to product offerings and new technologies to bear on the development of products to increase efficiencies and provide better protection and comfort.

In 2021, the company also opened a new mask manufacturing plant in Woodbridge, Ontario, with the ability to produce three types of masks: two types of N95 masks and one type of surgical mask with three levels of protection (ASTM Level 1, 2 and 3). RONCO used the unprecedented circumstances of COVID-19 to branch out even more than before, with continuing positive results.

Ron touts the familial atmosphere of RONCO as having brought the company to the prominent status it enjoys today. Vani further adds that many of her colleagues in the company have been there for the twenty-five years the company has been active, and that much pride is taken in the simple things around the workplace because it is considered a home. Above all, the workforce believes that they are in a business that makes a difference.

During the early days of the pandemic, the teams came together and worked day and night to supply frontline workers with materials and keep them safe at a very uncertain time. “We didn’t have to force people to work; in fact, I had to kick people out!” Ron laughs. Protecting the workers of Canada gave the workforce a great deal of pride.

Top-driven culture has ignited dedication in the employees, something that is visible every day in words and actions. Employees truly feel like part owners in the business because its success is important to everyone.

Many challenges still exist for RONCO and other companies navigating the PPE space. There is currently a degree of volatility within the market as many businesses face supply chain issues, while conflicts like the current war in Ukraine add further uncertainty.

After the pandemic began, many companies entered the PPE market but did not have a strong understanding of it. This led to these outfits purchasing products with less attention to quality and safety standards. The market has since come under more control, but a lot of pressure has been created due to lower-quality products and less buyer confidence in PPE as a result.

Vani sees the industry as very fragmented right now, with multi-national players sharing the stage with established companies like RONCO and smaller businesses as well. This fragmentation has increased the need for companies in the industry to become self-sufficient and continue growth, a priority which can be helped by Canadian customers choosing PPE products manufactured domestically.

RONCO remains a recognizable industry name with a proven track record and hopes to eventually become self-sustaining. The one guiding principle that has remained true since day one is that the company wants to grow in Canada and promote made-in-Canada products to those who need them.

An upcoming milestone for RONCO will be the opening of an additional Chinese factory in June of this year to produce non-woven products, like coveralls, lab coats, and shoe covers. Vani emphasizes that Canada is still the company’s main market, and the pandemic refocused its energies on its home country as it was felt to be its responsibility.

The company is once again exploring more sales opportunities in Europe, the Middle East, the United States, and China, and plans for further expansion are back on track. RONCO has even returned to the global stage through international trade shows to show off its products. The company will also be expanding its new line of sustainable products called RONCO Earth; currently, the line consists of a nitrile examination glove that biodegrades faster in landfills.

In the past twenty-five years, RONCO has been lauded for its efforts in PPE by publications, industry associations, and even the government of Ontario. “There are very few companies in the PPE space making a difference like we are,” Vani says. Ron believes that a company is only as good as the people it has, and the people and quality on display at RONCO continue to prove that to this day.

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