Cox Named ASQ-Certified Quality Auditor The Certification Board of the American Society for Quality has announced that Katherina Cox has completed the requirements to be named an ASQ-certified Quality Auditor. This professional recognition indicates she has achieved a high level of proficiency in quality auditing practices. Kathy regularly assists William J. Erikson, our Director of Quality & Compliance, to assure Taylor continues to make progress in meeting the goals of the company’s Quality Management System. Bill himself was certified by ASQ last year as a Manager of Quality/Organizational Excellence. Bill is pictured congratulating Kathy, opposite. The skills in examining, questioning, evaluating, and reporting that are foundational to her success as a quality auditor inform Kathy's principal work as a researcher in our Marketing Department. Taylor Technologies' Quality Management System is certified to ISO 9001:2008. For more information about our commitment to building quality into our products and performance, see the article below. Swim Coaches Endorse Taylor Test Kits The American Swimming Coaches Association and its sister organization, SwimAmerica, have again designated Taylor Technologies their preferred provider of water-testing supplies. 2012 is the twelfth year in a row ASCA has chosen to partner with Taylor. "One of the essentials for good swim training is quality water," says John Leonard, ASCA's Executive Director. "Taylor Technologies' products provide the quality assurance that every coach and every swim facility needs in order to maximize the use of their pool." The American Swimming Coaches Association is a professional service organization with nearly 7,300 members including age-group coaches, high school and college coaches, learn-to-swim professionals at YMCAs and the like, master swimmers, and every former Olympic coach since 1956. All are dedicated to building a stronger swimming community through leadership, education, certification, and cooperation. Its affiliate, SwimAmerica, is the nation's leading learn-to-swim school. Taylor is proud to be part of this great sport, and in 2012 we are especially looking  forward to watching how our nation’s coaches and their best swimmers fare at the Summer Olympics in London. Management Restructuring Continues Taylor Technologies has promoted Jody O'Grady and Christopher Golden to new management positions within its Sales Department. As director of sales operations, O'Grady will oversee the company's customer relationship management strategy. A degreed chemist and NSPF Certified Pool/Spa Operator®, she joined Taylor’s customer service group in 1994 and advanced to manager of customer and technical services in 2005. As director of business development, Golden will work with longtime sales manager Wayne Ivusich to grow Taylor's pool test kit revenues. A chemical engineer and AWT-credentialed Certified Water Technologist, he sold and serviced industrial water treatment programs for 16 years before joining Taylor in 2007. In his new position he will continue to develop business with industrial water treaters. The promotions are among several moves the company is making in anticipation of the December retirement of Tom Metzbower as vice president of Sales and his transition to a new role, executive advisor to company president Paul F. Wooden Jr. "Keeping Tom on board in an advisory capacity will benefit Taylor’s management team, our customers, and the industries we serve, while allowing him to begin enjoying a more flexible schedule," says Wooden. "Taylor is fortunate to have a strong bench in the Sales Department and I'm confident customers will be in good hands with Jody and Chris at the helm." O'Grady's move up occasioned two more personnel changes in the Sales Department:  the promotion of Kathleen Webb to manager of customer service and the hiring of Gayle Ditzel as lead tech for the company’s technical support hotline. Webb is a 12-year veteran of Taylor's customer service group. Like her predecessor, Ditzel is a degreed chemist and NSPF Certified Pool/Spa Operator®, with extensive experience managing recreational water quality. Operation Christmas Child 2011 The hustle and bustle of the holiday season arrived early this year as volunteers from 8 local churches and 3 businesses gathered at Taylor to fill shoeboxes for OCC (Operation Christmas Child). OCC is run by Samaritan’s Purse, a nondenominational Christian organization that provides physical and spiritual aid to those who are hurting. Last year, they distributed nearly 8.2 million shoeboxes to disadvantaged children throughout the world. Our goal in 2011 was to fill 12,000 boxes for this worthy cause. Exuberant workers assembled mounds of boxes and then filled them with stuffed animals and other toys, school supplies, and toiletries. It took two Saturdays (October 15 and 22), 385 dedicated volunteers, the leadership of our production team, and God's grace to get the job done. In fact, we filled a grand total of 12,721 boxes. A great big thank you to everyone! Metzbower Appointed to RWQ Committee Taylor Vice President Tom Metzbower was named a full voting member of the Recreational Water Quality Committee of the Association of Pool & Spa Professionals at their September meeting. The Recreational Water Quality Committee is charged with developing and disseminating authoritative information about products and processes for maintaining water quality in swimming pools and hot tubs to the larger membership, namely manufacturers, designers, builders, installers, distributors and retailers, and service professionals. Tom also is serving a one-year term as Secretary/Treasurer of APSP's Manufacturers Council. New Pool/Spa Catalog Posted Here's an easy way to get acquainted with the products we make for the pool/spa market, including consumers, commercial operators, builders and dealers, service technicians, pool supplies distributors and retailers, and public health department inspectors. Flip through this virtual catalog! The new edition of our Test Kit Selection Guide includes links between the product description in the catalog to the product ordering screen elsewhere on our website, so that you can seamlessly see pictures, check out the test ranges and chemistries, review kit components, read test instructions, learn about any test interferences, view pricing information, and build a shopping cart. Alternatively, use the PDF files we've posted to print the pages you'd like to keep on hand. You can copy and paste text from the PDFs into your own documents, if you are a reseller. (Note:  High- and low-resolution product photography can be found in the same Services/Marketing Support area of our website.) Digital publishing of catalogs and other promotional materials is part of Taylor's commitment to "going green" throughout our business. A side benefit is being able to update the information in them immediately, as changes occur. We hope you’ll find our latest creation informative and user-friendly. Guest Column Helps Analysts Avoid Faulty Readings When Testing Pool Water Trade journal Pool & Spa News featured insights from Taylor Technologies in the August 2011 "Technically Speaking" column. The article by Pat Fitzgerald explains how proper technique and good housekeeping help ensure accurate test results. To read the unabridged version of her testing primer, click here. Version 2.0 of Pool/Spa Water Analysis Software Released June 17 Version 2.0 of the taylorwise™ Water Analysis Software (9003) is now available for purchase. Besides adding some new treatment products to the database and incorporating any recent dosage changes made by their manufacturers to treatment chemicals already in the database, the main changes in version 2.0 are: ability to print out customer notes plus save them to test histories ability to e-mail customers their test results addition of a cyanuric acid correction factor to the water balance calculation updated Saturation Index target (-0.3 to +0.5), with calculated SI appearing on the Water Analysis Report a metric alternative to the U.S. customary system of measurement taylorwise was originally designed for use with our WiseLAB® line for retailers. See the story below for more detail. The software can now be used to analyze tests results from any testing equipment, including our older retail laboratories—the "Big Blue" Water Analysis Center (K-0202) and the Counterlab Rx 1®—as well as any portable test kit that contains the tests for water balance, namely pH, alkalinity, and hardness. System requirements and pricing are unchanged. Any software license holder should update their existing program now by visiting this new user's support website:  http://www.taylorsoftwaresupport.com/. Updating your software will not affect the custom settings you have previously chosen. If you would like a FREE 10-day trial of our water analysis software, click on the Download Software button on the user’s support website cited above. Preparing for Management Transition at Taylor Here's a sobering statistic about family-owned businesses:  only about 30% survive the transition to the second generation. Poor communication and inadequate preparation are chief among the reasons why, according to experts in succession planning. Paul F. Wooden Jr., 61, president and CEO of Taylor Technologies, is determined his manufacturing firm will not fail for those reasons. His son and namesake, familiarly known as Alex, has shown himself to be equally committed to the business from a very young age. Read the full article about the newly minted MBAs. Software Developer Partners with Taylor Following on the successful collaboration in 2010 that produced the WiseLAB® computerized laboratories for pool products retailers and associated taylorwise™ water analysis software, Paul F. Wooden Jr., president of Taylor Technologies, has announced the firm has formalized a long-term strategic partnership with Thomas H. Wise, president of Wise Software & Computer Products, Inc., Palmdale, California. Effective May 1, Mr. Wise now heads up all Taylor initiatives related to software for water analysis. "More and more of our R&D projects involve computer programming. We have worked with Tom Wise successfully on several occasions, most recently to develop the software for a pair of countertop laboratories designed for pool supplies retailers. He’s also joined us at trade shows. It made sense to formalize this affiliation. Now, not only do we have a reliable partner at the ready who knows our organization and product line, we can also offer custom programming to our customers," says Mr. Wooden. Founded in 1987 by Tom and his wife Betty, Wise Software & Computer Products is dedicated to meeting the computer hardware and software design needs of the swimming pool and spa industry. In 2011 their son Jason joined the Wise Software team as senior programmer/senior systems engineer. He will be taking over some of the administrative and programming duties performed by his father so that the senior Mr. Wise can devote more of his time to collaborations with Taylor. Our next project together is a smartphone app that will work with Taylor’s sureTRACK® test strips. Test Strips Featured in AQUA AQUA magazine spotlights sureTRACK®  test strips in its May 2011 "Product Focus:  State of the Industry." Our offer of free custom labeling for quantity purchases of the foil-pouch version (250+ pieces) caught the editor’s attention. Taylor unveiled a new look for the sureTRACK line at the International Pool|Spa|Patio Expo last fall. See examples in photo. The resealable foil pouches contain 10 strips and ship in packs of 25. The shaker dispensers for consumers each contain 50 strips and ship in packs of 12. sureTRACK test strips give water analysis results that compare favorably with Taylor wet-chemistry tests. We use a more expensive process than ordinary four-color printing to produce our color standards. Spot printing results in consistent hues throughout every production run, so there can be no confusion when matching the colors that develop on the strip with the color chart on the product label. The new dispenser prevents spoilage due to wet fingers by limiting how many strips can pop out at one time. The rest stay protected inside the container where an extra-large desiccant pillow absorbs intrusive moisture. Our resealable foil pouch version is ideal for checking the water quality at your local pool or fitness center, or the hotel pool when traveling. Click on these links for more information: 4-way in shaker:  K-1302-12 4-way in foil pouch:  K-1305-25 6-way in shaker:  K-1312-12 6-way in foil pouch:  K-1315-25 Improved Neutralizing Amines Test Taylor's K-1682, an acid-base titration test, can now be used to measure six neutralizing amines. One drop equals:   2.5 ppm monoethanolamine, 3.8 ppm methoxypropylamine, 3.8 ppm morpholine, 4 ppm cyclohexylamine, 5 ppm diethylethanolamine, or 6 ppm triethanolamine.   Click here to read more. We Make the Journal of Environmental Health The January/February 2011 issue of the Journal of Environmental Health, the official publication of the National Environmental Health Association, features an interesting article submitted by the Environmental Health Services Branch of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to the authors, the EHSB promotes the valuable services performed by environmental health specialists in order to attract more candidates to the profession. One outreach is their internship program for college students. Four interns are selected to shadow a practicing sanitarian for 10 weeks. Among the opportunities for fieldwork illustrated in the article was public pool inspection. We were pleased to spy a Taylor Service Complete™ test kit poolside! Testing Tutorial:  "Stop Sabotaging Your Test Results" No matter how good the chemistry of your test kit, field test results cannot be relied upon to drive water treatment decisions unless the right equipment is used, the right location is sampled, and the right testing techniques are employed. Chris Golden's December 2010 webinar for members of the Association of Water Technologies is about how to avoid common mistakes that can sabotage an industrial water treater’s test results. Click to view it here.   AWT is a trade group of over 500 companies dedicated to industrial water treatment. It serves member firms by providing business and technical education, as well as networking opportunities, to help assure a profitable enterprise and a professional image. For more information visit their website, www.awt.org. Taylor has been an active member of AWT for over 20 years. In-store Water Testing Just Got Easier and Faster The first units of our new WiseLAB® line were shipped and installed last summer…and initial feedback from pool supply retailers has been very encouraging. "What a good looking lab! Perfect size for my test station," said the new owner of a WiseLAB for sureTRACK® Test Strips (K-0201). "We are loving that 'reagent garage' idea. It’s a timesaver not having to recap bottles till the end of the day without the reagents going bad," said a WiseLAB for Wet Chemistry (K-0200) buyer.   Pool & Spa News has also named the WiseLAB line to its Top 50 Products of 2011, based on reader interest in the product review published last December. Our latest innovations for water analysis at the retail level go beyond giving test results to offer computer-generated treatment recommendations based on each store's inventory of chemicals. Built of 18-guage, rust-resistant steel, the WiseLAB countertop laboratories feature familiar Taylor chemistries and programming by industry leader Wise Software. Both labs guide the user with lighted prompts and screen messages; enable retailers to make adjustments to the water analysis program based on local conditions; create a shopping list from 340+ branded treatment products or their generic equivalents; and allow store managers to completely personalize the customer's printout for their business. The taylorwise™ operating software (9003), which must be purchased separately, is downloaded from a special users' support website. "I found it very easy to customize the software for our lab after watching the demonstration on your website," another new owner told us. To use it, you'll need a computer within six feet of the lab with these minimum system requirements: CPU: Pentium® III or better RAM: 500 megabytes Available Hard Disk Storage: 30 megabytes Operating System: Windows® XP, Windows® Vista, or Windows® 7 (compatible with 32-bit systems and 64-bit systems)   You can watch video of the labs in action here. Credit Card News Taylor now accepts VISA®, MasterCard®, Discover®, and American Express® for domestic (U.S.) orders placed online. If your order ships within the continental U.S. and you make an immediate payment with one of these cards, you are eligible for our flat-rate service, as outlined below. Total of Purchase             Flat-Rate Charge          (pre-Tax)                  for Standard Shipping $0 - $25.00                                $7.50 $25.01 - $50.00                         $5.00 Over $50.00                               FREE Carriers may impose packaging restrictions and special charges for transporting your order. Our flat-rate charge for standard shipping DOES NOT include any special charges that are levied by the carrier on "dangerous goods" and certain glassware, nor "protect from freezing" service that you request. Shipments to Alaska and Hawaii often involve packing restrictions and special charges by the carrier for transporting orders outside the continental U.S. You pay ONLY the actual shipping cost (no handling fee for Taylor). Before processing your order, Taylor will notify you by e-mail of the carrier's charges for your approval. More information about purchasing options is available in the Learn More section of this website under FAQs. Have You Seen Our Video Demos? Last spring we embarked on a project to videotape product demonstrations for some of our best-selling kits. To see what’s currently available, navigate to the Product Info button at the top of this screen. Select "View Online Demo." Then choose your category of interest to see what’s in the library. Check back often as we will keep adding videos throughout the year.   Note:  Our product demos use a high-quality video format. They are best viewed on a computer with a processor that is at least 1.6 GHz and has at least 1 GB RAM. To prevent "stuttering," it may be helpful to pause the video for about 20 seconds immediately after starting it to allow it to buffer completely. Please Consider Lending Your Support Every 15 seconds a child dies from a water-related disease somewhere in the world. Water For People is a leading NGO (non-governmental organization) working hard to eradicate the conditions behind this awful statistic. They help people in developing countries improve their quality of life by partnering with them to provide locally sustainable drinking water resources, sanitation facilities, and health and hygiene education programs. Safe Water International Ministries operates on a much smaller scale out of Washington, Iowa, with no paid staff. SWIM volunteers visit remote villages in Central America and southern Africa spreading the Gospel and delivering a simple lightweight device that generates chlorine for disinfecting potable water by the electrolysis of common table salt. Taylor shares these charities' vision:  a world where all people have access to safe drinking water and sanitation, a world where no one suffers or dies from a water- or sanitation-related disease. In 2011 we are pleased to continue our financial support of their missions. To learn more about them and how you too could help, visit http://www.waterforpeople.org/ and http://www.swimforhim.net/. Faster, More Complete Mixing If you perform many drop-count titrations in a day that involve our 9198 sample tube, you should consider adding a new tool to your testing arsenal:  the SpeedStir® (9265). This palmsize, portable magnetic stirrer will thoroughly incorporate each addition of reagent in a fraction of a second. Place the water sample on the mixing platform, gently drop in the Teflon®-coated stir bar, turn the unit on, and dispense reagent. No more manual swirl­ing! When ambient light is poor, six LEDs below the mixing platform can be lit up to make color changes in the test sample easy to see. The SpeedStir runs on four AA alkaline batteries at 600 rpm. The start-up pack, product number 9265, includes the stirrer, the stir bar, the 9198 sample tube, and batteries. To read the product flier, click here. For pricing, click here. Success Meeting ISO 9001:2008 William J. Erikson, Taylor's Director of Quality & Compliance, says the firm has received notification from registrar Intertek Testing Services NA that our Quality Management System has been certified to the newest ISO standard, ISO 9001:2008. An independent auditor from Intertek visited Taylor in mid-September to determine whether the quality program governing our product development, manufacturing, and customer service processes complies with the latest standards promulgated by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). To become certified, employees at every level must show their dedication to optimizing organizational performance and the company must specify the metrics it uses to track progress. Because of this, customers of certified businesses can use ISO conformance as demonstration of the company's commitment to continually improving the quality of its goods and services. At Taylor, we're committed to providing our customers with: - accurate and timely service, - consistent product performance, - a staff motivated to excel, - assured regulatory compliance, and - innovative business solutions. Try us and see! CNN Safe Swimming Inquiry Features a Commercial Series Kit A report by CNN's Carter Evans looked at how safe the water is for swimmers at public pools. On location in the Bronx, New York, he visits a YMCA he says has high standards for water quality maintenance. There a service professional is shown testing the pool water with Taylor's K-1748, a combination kit in the Commercial Series™ distinctive for its Midget™ comparators with liquid-color standards. Not all public pools are so vigilant, he says, citing a recent study by the federal Centers for Disease Control. Evans then interviews a representative from CDC’s "Healthy Swimming" initiative who warns of the public health dangers from poorly maintained pools. The remedy, they suggest, is for patrons to test the water themselves before jumping in, using a simple test strip that will detect pH and sanitizer levels. Taylor is proud to manufacture the test kits of choice for conscientious public pool operators and the service companies who cater to them. For personal assistance in selecting the testing products most appropriate for your application, call 800-TEST KIT (837-8548). One of our representatives will be glad to help! SampleSizer Measuring Tool Debuts Many Taylor specialty tests are done with either a 25-mL or 10-mL water sample in our 9198 sample tube, for instance the FAS-DPD chlorine test, the EDTA chelant test, and the saltwater test for pools. Using this new tool, you won't need to flick off the excess water to get the meniscus of the sample water to rest precisely on the fill line. Simply lower the SampleSizer® into the 9198 test vial filled with the water to be tested. It will displace exactly the right amount to leave the correct volume to perform the test:  either 25 mL or 10 mL, depending on which end of the tool goes in first. The SampleSizer is removed once the extra water is splashed out. Order singly (6190), or in the 12-pack (6190-12) for a 10% savings. Click here to view an on-line demo of the SampleSizer in action. The SampleSizer was one of a handful of innovations selected by Pool & Spa News for their feature "2010 New Products." Boiler/Cooling Water Tests Get Makeover Check out the bold new look of our most popular kits for industrial water treatment...we've color-coded the reagent caps to the test instructions and provided picture guides to the color transitions you can expect in your treated water sample. Click here for a flier describing the new color-coded kits. New Water Balance Calculators For less than the cost of a burger and fries you can skip the arduous Saturation Index calculation when you're poolside. Plug your test values into one of our Watergram® Water Balance Calculators and learn immediately whether the water is trending towards scaling or corrosive conditions. The improved 6026 has become a three-disk slide rule, thus eliminating the manual subtraction step in the original version. This circular Watergram makes it easy to play with different treatment scenarios to see which of the water balance parameters makes the most sense to adjust. You'll find it in 2000 Series™ combination test kits and our countertop labs. We've also developed an electronic version that's as small as a credit-card-size pocket calculator (6028). Indeed, it can be used to perform basic mathematical operations besides the water balance calculation. The programming automatically takes into account the effect cyanuric acid has on total alkalinity and allows a user to override the default value for total dissolved solids with a specific TDS level. "What if" adjustment scenarios are a snap to perform with this solar-powered version, as only the changed value(s) needs to be reentered. The 6028 is included in all Professional Series™ test kits. Note:  both models offer a temperature choice of degrees Fahrenheit or degrees Celsius. To read more about the advances made in the Watergram, click here. Cornerstone Newsletter Circulation Nears 15,000 The Cornerstone's subscriber base now numbers nearly 15,500. This quarterly newsletter offers timely and profitable information for those who test water in boilers and cooling systems in commercial, industrial, and institutional settings. If you're not already receiving this publication, some of the topics you've missed include tests for cycle monitoring in steam boilers, measuring nitrite in cooling systems, new tests for polymer in boiler and cooling waters, a tutorial on analyzing alkalinity, the finer points of chloride testing, summaries of our hardness and sulfite test choices, chlorine tests for the food industry, and a review of testing techniques. To sign up for a complimentary subscription, click here. Don't miss another issue! Entertain & Educate Customers with the Pool Investigotter! Nature's premier aquatic detective, the Pool Investigotter™, makes a colorful pitchman for Taylor's testing products. Retailers are invited to take the survey now running on our website. In return, you'll receive a vinyl banner, poster, counter mat, door decal, and take-one pad of testing tips starring our intrepid "PI."