Are you taking advantage of all the benefits of PMA membership?
The value of belonging to an association like ours can be forgotten in the midst of handling business operations and personal obligations. So here’s a reminder that PMA is here to help you and your company stay ahead of the curve and operate to the best of your ability.
A sampling of the most valuable PMA tools:
- Networking: The relationships you build at PMA create new opportunities for you professionally and for your business. Who knows? You might find a unique partnering opportunity where you both can provide new advantages to customers.
- Problem solving: Use PMA as a forum for questions. Have a molding issue? Bring it up to a fellow molder. Our collaborative knowledge as a group is much stronger than our individual knowledge.
- Marketing: PMA works with a strategic partner to promote the urethane industry in the media. Case studies or story ideas that highlight the advantages of using polyurethane versus other materials are always welcomed from members. Have any ideas? Shoot us an email.
- Industry education: PMA keeps you at the tip of emerging trends through Processing Technique Seminars. Each training seminar provides in-depth, hands-on education courses on everything from the basics to advanced techniques in the cast urethane industry.
- Compliance: As we discussed in a previous blog, PMA can help you with regulatory compliance at your facility with our Regulatory Compliance Self-Certification Program. In the process, we help keep your employees safe and operations running smoothly, resulting in lower costs and risks for fines and liability.
- Safety and compliance solutions: PMA has partnered with J.J. Keller to provide members with a resource for a broad spectrum of regulatory compliance products from training programs, guides, and manuals to recordkeeping materials and forms. PMA members receive a 10% discount on all online purchases.
- Legal Counsel & Industrial Hygienist Consulting Service: PMA contracts with Don Gallo, shareholder in the Environmental Department of Reinhart Boerner Van Dueren, SC. Don is able to help with a variety to environmental, issues from cost recovery and contribution to insurance recovery and permitting. We also work with Dr. Ted Hogan, Industrial Hygienist, who has developed a Comprehensive Safety and Health Model Program for PMA members. Dr. Hogan is able to privately address questions between meetings for up to two hours per year for no fee.
This list by no means is comprehensive. We offer so much more, so don’t forget: we’re here to help.
If you have any suggestions to additional benefits that the PMA does not currently offer and would like to see it added to your membership, please leave a comment or send your idea to rjennings@insideSH.com
PMA Membership Has Its Privileges
Rolling Power: Urethane Is the Wheel Deal
You might say polyurethane has “reinvented the wheel.” And in this case, that’s a very good thing.
From the most spectacular skateboarding stunts to the world’s fastest roller-coasters, urethane has played a game-changing role in many people’s lives.
And yet, the story of cast polyurethane remains relatively unknown. But at PMA, we’re working to change that.
Here are a two quick snapshots of our material’s success.
n The Skating Sensation. No other elastomer or plastic wheel can meet the high-wear demands of skateboarding, in-line skating and the street luge. For all of these sports, urethane provides the necessary grip, roll and durability allowing for us to marvel at the athletes who defy gravity and air with fearless speed. The material’s superior durability is credited with enabling a skateboarding revolution and spawning an entire movement in the 1970s.
n Incredible Coasters. Racing down the track of one of today’s lightning-fast roller-coasters wouldn’t be half the hair-raising experience it is without urethane wheels. It’s in the chemistry, notes Trevor Hite, general manager of entertainment ride company Chance Morgan. Urethane wheels reduce friction on the steel tracks, wear longer and produce quicker speeds than ever.
And don’t forget a humbler but no less important advancement achieved on urethane wheels—suitcases that glide smoothly through long airport corridors, rather than weighing down weary travelers.
Clearly, urethanes have been on a roll for many years, and the potential for the material remains strong. However, to turn that potential into reality, we must continue to educate the market about these exciting successes.
So let’s all do our part and spread the word.
See any stories we missed? Feel free to share your favorite urethane wheel stories below or as always shoot us an email at rjennings@insideSH.com.