With baby boomers retiring at an unprecedented rate, skilled workers in U.S. industries have a recruitment emergency to face: where will the next generation of skilled workers come from? How do they acquire the expertise they need in a highly technical industry?

An unscheduled shutdown hits hard: production grinds to a halt, machinery stands idle, and costs continue to rise.

This infographic illustrates why it's essential to maximize equipment uptime and avoid the crippling costs of an unscheduled stoppage.

Joe Nettemeyer believes the very nature of leadership throughout distribution is changing ... and must change.

Joe explains that there has been a seduction to "easy" as a result of the long history of growth our economy, markets, industries, and businesses have experienced over the last decades.

We've heard about how the introduction of Apple's iPhone changed the business model of Apple (again) and how this one product represented 60% of the company's revenues before the iPhone was four years old.

Apple is certainly one company that continues to innovate its business model.

Well, the most innovative distributors are doing the same. These Innovative distributors see the need to evolve the business beyond the traditional - of just moving products - box in box out.

Joe Nettemeyer, the president and CEO of industrial distributor Valin Corporation believes that culture is the great differentiator in business today.  But beyond platitudes, he works to nurture the needed culture every day.

In a world where most distributors are trapped by sameness and commoditization, Valin stands apart with its value proposition that is captured in the statement - Helping You Achieve Your Goals.

Automation has been around since the 50s, but the modern era of automation really started in the 1980s. Many of these machines haven't been updated since that time - more than 30 years. Over time, these machines tend to have little problems arise here and there, and frankly, the hardware can be very difficult to support and often impossible to repair due to older technologies going obsolete.

We live in an age of disruption. There is this perfect storm of geo-political movement, economic uncertainty, government influence, demographic shifts, and of course the technology revolution.

A growing trend in industrial plant design is wireless connectivity. Recent technological advances have made wireless protocols significantly more robust and reliable than previous versions, enough so to rival traditional hard-wired connections.

The principal difference between the nature of the flow of gas and the flow of liquid through control valves is that liquids are incompressible, and gasses are compressible.

Selecting a valve with the correct flow characteristic (the relationship between valve opening and flow capacity) can be as important as the selection of the valve size.

Proper training in product, maintenance, and system startup was an essential part of a successful startup of the heat tracing system at the power plant.

Industrial Distribution recently had the chance to speak with Joseph Nettemeyer, President & CEO of Valin? Corporation, a company that made the 2012 Big 50 Watch List

Factory automation mobility is not just about iPads. Companies of all sizes need to think about the software needed to push context-sensitive information to operators and managers.

Intelligent Actuator Inc (IAI) is a world leader in the design and manufacture of off-the-shelf single and multi-axis servo positioning systems and SCARA robots.

IAI answers some of their most asked questions

Eight Reasons Why Off-Loop Filters Work

Populations Equipment packagers have an uncanny talent for squeezing major components into very small footprints, obviously to minimize floor-space requirements.

While demographers busily count the world's population, manufacturers world-wide fight a different battle against growing particle populations within lube-oil and hydraulic systems.

One resource that you may have overlooked is OSHA's collection of standard interpretation letters, which are OSHA's official responses to written questions about compliance with the agency's requirements.

Standard fluid line systems were for many years constructed from threaded pipe of assorted materials and were assembled with various standard pipe fitting shapes.

Emissivity is a surface property that determines how much radiation an object emits at a given temperature compared to a blackbody at the same temperature.

If an IRt/c sensor is installed and does not function as expected the failure may be due to something other than the sensor.