Author: Nedjine Doreus

With over 85,000 of our paint tinting dispensers in the field and nearly 450 third-party field service engineers on the ground, managing aftermarket operations has posed a significant challenge for the Fast and Fluid Management (FFM) team in India.

India’s Digital team recently partnered with FFM-Asia Dispensing to develop digital tool to efficiently manage growing field service business demands.  

Through their United Expertise, both teams designed a seamless, data-driven workflow that connects multiple stakeholders—customers, service partners, and over 450 on-contract field service engineers. This collaboration led to the creation of the Service Relationship Manager (SRM) tool, a digital platform that automates and streamlines aftermarket support.

Key Features of SRM:

• Automated Ticket Assignment: Service tickets are auto-assigned in seconds based on engineer location, reducing manual effort from 5–6 hours to mere moments.
• Real-Time Dashboards: Instant visibility into service performance and service level agreement (SLA) compliance.
• Integrated Reporting: Automatic generation of service reports and KPI tracking for customer satisfaction.
• Partner & Team Management: Monitor third-party service partners, track digital attendance, and measure team performance.
• Data-Driven Decisions: Secure data insights enable smarter business strategies. 

The Impact

• Delivered an intuitive user experience with digital ticket access and real-time Key Performance Indicator (KPI) reporting.
• Reduced ticket assignment time from hours to seconds through automation.
• Enabled real-time monitoring of service partners and field engineers.
• Empowered business decisions with secure, data-driven insights.

What started as a challenge – managing aftermarket support for 85,000 dispensers and hundreds of engineers – became an opportunity to collaborate with extended colleagues. Together, the Dispensing Service team and India’s Digital team created Service Relationship Manager (SRM), a solution that redefines how they deliver service: faster, smarter, and always customer-first.

Our colleagues at Mott continue to embrace Lean Manufacturing principles, with a recent project transforming the efficiency of a critical cell so the team could quickly meet a tenfold increase in demand with speed and quality.

On the cusp of winning a new project, the team knew they had to ramp up iso-tube production. Fast!

Led by IDEX VP of Business Operations & Integration Mike, the Mott team carried out a series of improvement activities, including two value stream mapping sessions, three standard work events, and two 3P (Production, Preparation, and Process) workshops.

Mott’s iso-cell had struggled to hit daily output. With projected order targets, they had lots of work to do.

Through discipline, collaboration, and focus, this cell is now able to produce a 10x increase! And, they now hit at a 21% increase! The team also reduced the number of actual walking steps from 19,548 steps per shift to 8,344 steps per shift, simplifying work and eliminating unnecessary motion.

Customers use Mott’s specialized iso-pressed porous metal tubes – typically stainless steel and other high-performance alloys – in filtration, flow control, gas diffusion, and fluid management. They are used in demanding applications where precise, uniform pore sizes are needed under demanding conditions, such as high heat and corrosive fluids.

Congratulations to the team. By minimizing the amount of waste and variation in producing goods for customers, Mott is now poised to deliver on this significant demand increase and satisfy an important customer.

Since the program was launched earlier this year, 13 business units have achieved IDEX Green certification, demonstrating our commitment to improving sustainability across our manufacturing operations.

These IDEX teams followed a practical, structured framework to better measure and understand their environmental footprint through data logging tools, installation of 100% LED lighting, reduction of water use and waste production, among other improvement efforts.

Sites also must optimize their compressor systems – oftentimes the most energy intensive equipment in a facility. Teams are encouraged to take advantage of free programs offered by local utilities to identify and address opportunities to improve energy efficiency.

Those who achieve these milestones not only reap the benefits of operational efficiency, they build a positive culture of sustainability and engagement in their workforces. Business units can also tout the achievement externally to customers and prospective employees.

Congratulations to the following IDEX Green certified businesses:

• ABEL Pump Technology
• Advanced Flow Solutions (Liquid Controls, Corken, SAMPI)
• Airtech
• Fast & Fluid Management
• Gast
• Godiva
• Hale
• IDEX Health & Science (Bristol, Connecticut & Rohnert Park, California)
• Richter
• Tecan
• Viking Pump (Cedar Falls, Iowa)
• Warren Rupp

Rubber chickens. T-shirts. Gloves. 

These aren’t things you’d typically associate with industrial pumping equipment. But at Warren Rupp, our colleagues fed them all to “The BEAST,” one of the company’s powerful and versatile SANDPIPER brand air-operated double diaphragm (AODD) pumps.  

Why? Because the Warren Rupp marketing team is cooking up a fun and quirky “BEAST Challenge” video campaign on YouTube.  

Best known for its ability to handle tough industrial fluids, The Beast took on a lineup of quirky items with ease in a test run this week outside their facility in Mansfield, Ohio. Time and again, the heavy-duty pump ingested one unusual item after another, spitting it out the other end – proving it’s difficult to clog a SANDPIPER pump.  

Our IDEX colleagues at Warren Rupp are global leaders in AODD pump technology. They serve industries ranging from chemical processing and mining to food production and wastewater treatment. Their flagship brands—SANDPIPER and Versamatic—are trusted by engineers and operators around the world for their durability, reliability, and performance. 

Warren Rupp’s pumps are designed to handle everything from abrasive slurries to delicate food-grade materials.  

Since 2020, the annual IDEX Food Insecurity Challenge has consistently served as a catalyst for action within the communities where we live and work. This year, in conjunction with the IDEX Foundation’s 6^th Annual Food Drive, IDEX Foundation India hosted the same initiative for the first time with the support of 326 employees in Mumbai, Vadodara and Sanand.

IDEX India collected and donated an impressive total of 12.7 metric tons (14 U.S. tons) of food grains to support underprivileged families in their surrounding communities of Sanand GIDC, near our facilities in Ahmedabad and Vadodara.

To ensure meaningful impact, they assessed the basic monthly ration needs of a family of five, and found the average requirement to be:

Based on this, the team organized their donations into one-month ration kits for 467 families. The foundation collaborated with Manav Seva Trust in Sanand and Baroda Youth Federation (BYF_NGO) to distribute kits to tuberculosis patients, pregnant women receiving government healthcare, and other at-risk individuals.

The total food collected and donated:

The IDEX India Foundation supports local charitable efforts in the communities in which IDEX employees live and work in India. It is separate from the IDEX Foundation, which because of local laws cannot operate in India.

In an example of creativity and resourcefulness, one of our teams at Iridian Spectral Technologies – a unit of IDEX specializing in designing and manufacturing thin-film, multi-layer high-performance filter optics – recently completed a remarkable rebuild of a Blanchard rotary surface grinder—transforming a decades-old, non-functional machine into a modern, production-ready asset.

The project began quietly in late 2022 when the control system of an early- ‘90s Blanchard unit failed. With no immediate need to bring it back online, the team initiated a low-priority effort to explore the feasibility of a full control system rebuild. The team drafted a preliminary design and ordered core components. They made initial progress, but soon paused the project. It remained that way until a second Blanchard unit failed earlier this year, prompting a shift in priorities.

What followed was a two-week sprint of innovation to refurbish the polishing machine. The team removed the outdated control system and servo, replacing them with a modern setup featuring a new servo, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), and touch panel. Custom mounting plates and a replacement timing gear were fabricated to integrate the new components seamlessly. By the end of the second week, the machine was running a fully automatic grind cycle.

However, the journey didn’t stop there. A failed bearing in the main grinding motor posed another challenge. Historically, these specialized conical bearings were costly and slow to source. Demonstrating true ingenuity, the team located an identical alternative for a fraction of the cost—and had them delivered within 24 hours. After a careful motor rebuild, the machine passed testing and completed its first successful grind.

A particularly exciting discovery during the rebuild was a plate indicating the machine originally belonged to Semrock now part of IDEX Health & Science—adding a layer of history to this upcycling success story.

Fine-tuning continued with precision shimming of the cutting head and magnetic chuck, reducing part wedge from 130μm to just 5μm. The machine was released to production shortly after and has since been running reliably, producing high-quality parts with minimal variation.

Beyond restoring a pivotal machine, this project has broader benefits. A new grinder is about $250-300K USD. This upcycling project took three weeks and cost $5K USD. Additionally, the team now has a flexible, in-house control system compatible with most Blanchard 8AD-12 units. This opens the door to future upgrades and salvaging efforts, offering a cost-effective alternative to purchasing new equipment while enhancing customization and workflow efficiency.

Based in Ottawa, Canada, Iridian Spectral Technologies is a global leader in designing and manufacturing thin-film, multi-layer high-performance filter optics.