August at Industrial Services
August Picnic
August – what a great month to have a cook out and celebrate all that our employees have accomplished so far this year! As a result, we planned our CIS Summer Event 2016 for Thursday, August 4, 2016, where all our CIS employees attended lunch and had fun in the afternoon playing games together!
Hot dogs and hamburgers were grilled outside our facility by our COO, Curtiss Quirin, on our custom- made grill. The CIS Staff helped serve the sandwiches, baked beans, potato salad, cole slaw, fruit salad, and all the sandwich fixin’s, along with fresh tomatoes from our very own CIS Urban Garden. Then we played some games together for prizes that were donated, and a great time was had by all!
Now we’re back to the regular rhythm of serving our customers’ needs after some great camaraderie, so if your business is in need of FDA registered solutions, contract manufacturing, order fulfillment solutions, product assembly, product packaging / repackaging, contract packaging, ETL testing, labeling / relabeling, or document scanning, Crossroads Industrial Services / Crossroads Document Services can provide those services with a great employment workforce at a fair cost in a reasonable amount of time.
CareCycle Partnership Expands Business
CareCycle, owned by Lance DeNardin, Brian Evans and Randy Randall, has partnered with Crossroads Industrial Services, a division of Easter Seals Crossroads, for the past 3 years to set up and run their reprocessed fluid management system manifold business within the Crossroads facility. Set-up and preparation for this work required a dedicated area and installation of new equipment within the Crossroads facility. Detailed written policies and procedures to meet FDA standards and regulations were also established. Crossroads has provided proper training for the employees working on this job to follow the FDA standards that are critical to its success.
Crossroads’ work for CareCycle involves cleaning, disinfecting and reprocessing plastic manifolds, which are components of the fluid management systems used in hospital operating rooms. Hospitals collect the used manifolds in special containers that are then shipped directly to Crossroads for disassembly, cleaning / disinfecting, inspection, and redistribution back to the hospitals. This is a green initiative that saves plastic from the landfills and helps the environment. Reprocessing these devices lowers hospital costs by providing reprocessed parts that were previously discarded after a single use. Each device can be recycled up to 10 times, diverting tons of plastic from entering the landfills.
Lance DeNardin stated “Many of our customers are aligned with our mission of saving money, diverting medical waste and creating jobs for adults with disabilities in our community. Our affiliation with Crossroads has definitely expanded our business.”
As a result of our successful joint efforts, Crossroads has employed up to four employees on this job, and most recently a cleaning technician, to lead the reprocessing of all the CareCycle fluid system manifolds.
Crossroads is excited about the future and continuation of its partnership with CareCycle as we look forward to providing the needed excellent reprocessing services to grow the business, help the environment, reduce medical costs and provide additional employment!
Contact us to learn how we can help expand your business.
Document Scanning Solutions for Rexnord Corporation
Crossroads Document Services recently completed a huge assignment for Rexnord Corporation, a bearing manufacturer located in Indianapolis. In March 2014, Rexnord contracted with Crossroads Document Services to scan all of the equipment operations/maintenance and quality manuals, totaling several hundred volumes, from their Indianapolis and Tennessee facilities. Most of these manuals were originals for equipment that had been in use for years, and many volumes showed significant wear and tear.
CDS scanned the manuals into legible images, providing a digital archive that allows access by multiple personnel and ensures the books will not be lost or deteriorate any further. At Rexnord’s request, CDS also provided clean paper copies printed from the digital files.
That project was completed in batches over the course of a year and utilized up to five employees to prep, scan and index the manuals. The success and excellent results of that project prompted a recommendation from Rexnord’s Purchasing Dept. to their Design & Engineering Department to use CDS for another even bigger job.
In March 2015, Rexnord’s Indianapolis Design & Engineering Department was faced with the daunting task of ensuring the security and access of their entire collection of large format engineering and facilities drawings, dating back to the early 1900s when the company was owned by Link Belt. Those drawings, totaling over 60,000, were their only copies, stored in 13 cabinets in the Indianapolis facility, and many of the originals were deteriorating badly. Rexnord needed a document solution to preserve these drawings and their history.
An insurance auditor recommended they have the drawings scanned. As a result of the previous excellent work and results delivered by Crossroads Document Services on the Maintenance project, CDS was chosen by the Design & Engineering Dept. to provide Rexnord’s document solution.
Each cabinet was picked up and delivered to and from Crossroads by the Crossroads transportation team. Every large format drawing from every cabinet was handled by the Crossroads Document Services team in a multi-step process that required a high level of complex judgment at every step. Because the documents spanned nearly a hundred years, there was a wide range of drawing types and conditions, requiring a variety of scanner settings to ensure excellent image capture to create the digital drawing archive for future reference.
Each digital drawing file was reviewed for quality and named with multiple fields, including drawing number, title, part numbers, machine numbers, etc. This data was then entered into spreadsheets, along with additional information about each document.
Mary Jo Gremling, Manager of Crossroads Document Services, is very proud of her team and their excellent work. “I’ve been in the imaging business for over 13 years, and I know this job was technically difficult, but we have a highly-skilled crew that was up to the challenge. Special recognition goes to Sue Shinholt, who scanned most of the 60,000-plus drawings, and to Juanita Grant, who had to become very familiar with Rexnord’s machine and part numbers to enter most of the data over the course of the project.”
This job employed about six people at CDS, with two employees working exclusively on it for over a year and three to four others involved at various phases. The project was completed in June 2016 with excellent results and rave reviews from Rexnord’s Design & Engineering Department: “[We are] elated with the scans. This is going to really help us having these older drawings on file electronically, particularly with searchable data. Thank all of you for all your hard work.”
Caption left: Sue Shinholt became a large format scanning expert as she imaged most of the 60,000-plus Rexnord drawings. Caption right: Chrissy Shreves scanned many of the Rexnord maintenance manuals.
If your business is in need of Document Solutions, Crossroads Document Services can provide the following services with a great employment workforce at a fair cost in a reasonable amount of time:
- High-speed production scanners with high output capacity
- Large format production scanners with high volume capability
- Book scanner capable of handling oversized ledgers
- Professional imaging, OCR and indexing software
- Microfilm / microfiche
- Indexing / data entry
- Conversion to multiple file formats
- Secure, limited access to your information while in our possession
For more information, please contact us.
You can also email
John Nick, CDS Sales Manager
jnick@crossroadsindustrialservices.org
Mary Jo Gremling, CDS Production Manager
mgremling@crossroadsindustrialservices.org
Medical Equipment Company Partnership
When it was time for local entrepreneur Barbara Wood to select a distribution supplier for her business, she chose Crossroads Industrial Services. Barbara is the inventor of Helping Hand Cane. The cane is a unique, patented (DME) solution needed for people with mobility and bending disabilities. It gives cane users their independence and most important – their safety – due to the integration of two key functions; walking support and the ability to pick up dropped articles. Crossroads will be accelerating the growth of Helping Hand Cane by providing warehousing, packaging, order fulfillment and customer interface.
“Our relationship with Crossroads has been very beneficial. We know Crossroads will provide excellent nation-wide distribution while employing talented people with disabilities to give us the scale we need to fulfill increased product demand,” said Barbara.
“We are pleased to be awarded this business and an opportunity to work with Helping Hand Cane as a trusted partner. Their product fits well with our mission and will have a significant impact for people with mobility issues. Crossroads will provide a flexible solution with our scalable manufacturing and distribution operations,” said Curtiss Quirin, COO of Crossroads Industrial Services.
Cane users everywhere will gain confidence, safety and independence with the Helping Hand Cane. Crossroads Industrial Services can meet your company’s needs, too; contact us for more information.
Grassroots Advocacy Conference
Each year in June, individuals with disabilities throughout the nation gather in Washington, DC, with family members and NPA executives to meet with political leaders and decision makers to advocate for employment opportunities for individuals with disabilities. Crossroads Industrial Services has helped to deliver this important employment message to Congress for several years now. This year, Jeff Gore and Chad Weimer will attend the conference scheduled from June 13 through June 16.
Jeff Gore has been part of the Crossroads Industrial Services team for 26 years; he is a product manager and his current role includes customer service, production planning, business development, product cost analysis, quality/safety management administration and more.Chad Weimer has been a CIS employee for 13 years – he is a basic assembler and has been a key employee for several large projects throughout his tenure.
Kerry McGinley from SourceAmerica recently spoke with Chad to learn more about his interests and hopes in attending this year’s conference.
Weimer has been an integral part of helping to produce numerous AbilityOne identifier panel kits, which the U.S. Army and Marines uses on its vehicles to prevent friendly fire strikes on the soldiers riding inside. Chad’s work on the panel kits involved sewing of the straps that were used to mount panels to certain vehicles. Weimer knows his work has helped save lives of men and women in uniform. “I was honored,” he said. “That was my favorite job ever. I loved that job. It was just awesome.”
Weimer’s confidence has increased over the course of his time at Crossroads, said Anne Traub, Human Resources Manager. He’s proud of the numerous thank-you cards he’s received for his work, and recently earned his driver’s license. “His job experience was probably limited when he first came to work for us,” she said. “I think that he understands the perspective of being a little unsure about what he could contribute versus now looking at what he has contributed and being very proud of that.”
Weimer is more comfortable on an assembly line than speaking publicly. But he’s willing to brave his shyness to once again make a difference on the job. This time it will be speaking up as a self-advocate meeting with Indiana lawmakers as part of SourceAmerica’s Grassroots Advocacy Conference June 13-16.
He admits he’s “kind of scared,” but he knows it’s important for legislators to meet the people they affect through their legislation. Weimer and other self-advocates from more than 50 SourceAmerica member nonprofits will come to Washington, D.C., for training, then onto meetings with members of Congress. They’ll meet one-on-one with other representatives and senators to tell them how various pieces of legislation could affect employment opportunities and the workplace for people with disabilities.
And he hopes to find some time on his upcoming trip to visit the White House and maybe the Lincoln Memorial. “I’m going to see everything I can,” he said. “I want to see it all.”
GimmeCharge and Crossroads Partnership
Crossroads Industrial Services in Indianapolis has partnered with a company called GimmeCharge — a privately held company based in Indianapolis owned by brothers, Trevor and Tyler Back. GimmeCharge designs and manufactures a patented device that allows people to plug any device equipped with a USB port into any golf cart in order to charge it.
Speaking about the partnership and the value of the relationship, Trevor Back, co-owner of GimmeCharge, said
“As our company continues to grow, Crossroads is there to help. For example, we now use Crossroads to not only assemble our product, but they also assist with daily order shipping. Either we had managed or we outsourced shipping in the past, but Crossroads has taken on this task admirably.”
Jeff Gore, the Product Manager who oversees the GimmeCharge job at Crossroads, said “GimmeCharge has been a good partner, even introducing Crossroads to a new skill set — ultrasonic welding.” Crossroads Industrial Services has been providing product packaging, repackaging and order fulfillment solution services to GimmeCharge for approximately 2 years and employing up to 2-4 full-time employees.
If your business is in need of product assembly, product packaging / repackaging, contract packaging, ETL testing, labeling / relabeling, or contract manufacturing and order fulfillment solutions, Crossroads Industrial Services can provide those services
- with a great employment workforce
- at a fair cost
- in a reasonable amount of time.
For more information, please contact us.
