Category: Company News

The team at Gast partnered with Feeding America in southwest Michigan (USA) to sponsor a mobile food pantry in celebration of National Volunteer Week last month.

A team of 11 volunteers, representing multiple departments at Gast – a unit of IDEX which manufactures pneumatic products to move air and other gases — spent the afternoon setting up and operating a mobile “store” in a local neighborhood.

Mobile food pantries differ from traditional food banks by driving into neighborhoods and bringing food directly to the people who need it most. The mobile food pantry offered a variety of staples such as fresh fruits, vegetables, bread, milk, frozen goods, and even sweets.

In collaboration with the IDEX Foundation, The Gast mobile food pantry provided food to 82 households, feeding 278 total people in the community. After the event, a van load of extra milk was sent to a brick and mortar food bank to be handed out to even more people in need.

But Gast didn’t stop there.

The following day, the Employee Volunteer Team hosted a Burrito Breakfast with eggs, potatoes, and sausage burritos to benefit the United Way of Southwest Michigan. This year, though, the team put a new spin on it: Burritos and Briefs!

Every year, hundreds of children in southwest Michigan move in and out of foster care, too often only carrying the clothes they’re wearing. Most of the clothing they receive is through secondhand donations, and they often run out of underwear, so they must purchase them brand new.

Instead of cash, Gast employees purchased their burritos with a package of new underwear to be donated to the Foster Closet of Berrien County.

Gast employees full heartedly embraced this new spin on an established tradition and bought more than 200 burritos – more than ever before! Between the donated packages and those bought with the collected cash, Gast provided an astounding 1,137 pairs of underwear to the Foster Closet of Berrien County.

Gast’s next volunteer events are a Red Cross blood drive at the end of May, their second mobile food pantry distribution in June, and a food challenge with local businesses to support United Way’s “Christmas in June” food drive.

 

 

IDEX Health & Science (IH&S) team members from the Center of Excellence and Semrock facilities, volunteered for United Way’s Day of Caring in Rochester, New York last month.

Partnering with the Rochester Childfirst Network (RCN), 20 IH&S employees from the manufacturing, marketing and finance departments took down a dead tree and planted new ones in the sensory garden. Team members also cleared the sensory garden of weeds and leaves, created a new walking path, and cleaned up two other playground and garden areas. In addition, IH&S employees replaced a wooden ramp with cement, to ensure handicapped students have a safe way to exit the RCN facility in case of an emergency.

The IDEX Foundation donated $5,000 to support the cause.

Rochester Childfirst Network (RCN) is a not-for-profit agency dedicated to advancing the quality of early education and care in Western New York, through leadership, advocacy, and innovative direct services to children. Serving children since 1857, RCN aims for every child to grow up safe, strong, and able to achieve his or her full potential.

Teams at the IH&S Center of Excellence and Semrock facilities manufacture optical filters, lenses, light sources, and sub systems used in machines that perform DNA sequencing, among other applications.

 

 

 

 

 

Complete with rock ‘n’ roll-style tour T-shirts, IDEX Fire & Safety brands, Akron Brass, Hale and Class 1 are traveling across the United States with a demonstration pumper truck, showcasing the new SAM touch screen water control technology.

SAM, which IDEX Fire & Safety introduced last month, is an integrated total water flow control system that manages truck’s pump, tank, intakes and discharges.

SAM easily allows pump operators to adjust flow with a touch screen display that is mounted on the truck and helps firefighters get water moving quickly and efficiently, while allowing more freedom and mobility at the scene of a fire.  SAM drastically simplifies pump operations.  Traditional pump operations require up to 13 manual steps to get water flowing and the water source established.  With SAM, it only takes three simple finger swipes on the screen.

Since FDIC International, the SAM team has brought the truck to fire departments and trade shows in Ontario, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Michigan. They will continue on the road through the fall.

To see where the SAM truck is headed next, click here.

To see how the SAM technology works, click here.

 

Fluid Management (FM), a unit of IDEX which manufactures paint dispensing and mixing equipment in Wheeling, Illinois (USA), continued their partnership with Jane Addams Elementary school in nearby Palatine this month.

In their third year of the partnership, FM employees have assisted in several projects, including volunteering at the schools’ track and field day, science night, literacy night, funding the “One School One Book” program and more.

Recently, 31 FM employees hosted their 2^nd Book Fair for Jane Addam’s students. FM Employees setup the book store, helped students select books, and even read books to younger students throughout the day.

In collaboration with the IDEX Foundation, 581 students were able to select up to $20 worth of books and the school received additional books worth $2,500 to add to the library.

“Although the U.S. High School Graduation Rates are improving, there are still far too many students that do not finish high school,” said Mark Bishop, VP of Human Resources at Fluid Management. “Research suggests that children who develop a passion for books have a higher likelihood of finishing. Our team has done some really terrific work to encourage a love of learning and staying in school.”

Located near FM’s office, Jane Addams Elementary school serves students from Pre-K through 6^th grade.

 

Interactive Health recently named IDEX Corporation as one of the “Healthiest Companies in America,” recognizing the company’s high workplace wellness program participation rate and low overall health risks.

IDEX is one of just 151 companies in America to make the list. To be included, at least 70 percent of employees must participate in their workplace wellness program, and their workforce’s overall health risk must be low, based on the results of an annual health evaluation.

“A healthy workforce reaps so many benefits for both our company and our employees,” said IDEX Chief Human Resources Officer Jeff Bucklew said. “We place tremendous value on offering a comprehensive health and wellness program to help our employees, partners and families make positive changes to improve their overall well-being.”

Companies with successful employee wellness programs generally have higher productivity, lower medical costs, fewer workers’ compensation and disability claims, and reduced absenteeism, according to Interactive Health.

Read the Interactive Health press release by clicking here.

Available as part of the benefits package for U.S.-based employees, the IDEX Wellness Program empowers employees to take charge of their health, so they can be their best self – at home and at work.

The IDEX wellness resources include:

• One-on-one health coaching
• Weight management guidance
• Nutrition planning
• Fitness tips
• Diabetes prevention tips
• And more!

Sewer inspections are becoming significantly more efficient thanks to a latest innovation in crawler technology from iPEK, a unit of IDEX. Sulzberg, Germany-based iPEK, which manufactures wastewater inspection systems, introduced its new ROVION SAT II inspection system at the ROKATECH tradeshow earlier this month.

In the past, if the sewer pipe diameter of the sewage pipe changed, it would require the inspector to take the crawler out and adjust the setup, making the processes time consuming and tedious. Not anymore.

With three years of product development and tireless focus on their customers, the iPEK team developed the ROVION SAT II inspection system, consisting of an extremely powerful crawler and a revolutionary cable reel.

The new system is designed to resolve three major pain point for end users: limited pipe size range, high downtime and inefficient inspections of house connections, also known as laterals.

To improve the system’s flexibility, the RX140SAT II crawler expands the capabilities of its predecessor, allowing users to inspect sewer pipes ranging from 150mm – 2000mm, compared to 150mm to 600mm in the past. The new crawler also features a push rod and TV-cable, which allows the crawler to conduct lateral launches in a sewer system. With the addition of the 45-meter push rod, end users can now inspect pipe laterals more thoroughly and locate possible hazards in the sewerage system more quickly

To see the ROVION SAT II Field Test, click here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IDEX Corporate office employees partnered with Feed My Starving Children in Libertyville, Illinois, to pack food for children in Haiti last week.

Twenty-eight team members from the Human Resources, Legal and Accounting departments hand-packed bags with rice, soy, dried vegetables and a nutritionally complete blend of vitamins and minerals. After filling bags with food, team members also sealed, boxed and placed packages on pallets for shipping.

With four different groups of employees working together, the hand-packing event quickly turned into a competition to pack as much food as possible.

As a result, in just two hours team members packed a total of 74 boxes, providing almost 16,000 meals for children in Haiti!

Located near the IDEX offices in Lake Forest, Feed My Starving Children (FMSC) is a non-profit that provides nutritionally complete meals specifically formulated for malnourished children. Founded in 1987, FMSC has shipped more than 137 million meals to 43 countries this year alone.

To learn more about the organization, click here to watch a video.

 

Team members at GODIVA Limited, which manufactures vehicle-mounted fire and safety equipment, participated in an off-road 10K charity run near their Warwickshire, U.K., office last month.

The Wolf Run — which stands for woods, obstacles, lakes and fields — is a wild race that allows people to experience natural, raw running conditions.

Eight Godiva employees ran over and through some of nature’s finest obstacles, including, mud pits, fallen trees, hills and dense foliage, to raise money for an organization of their choice. With close personal connections to prostate cancer, the team raised £145 ($190 USD) in support of Prostate Cancer UK.

Participants included Justin Somanathan, Lewis Maynard, Simon Tudor, Kevin Raybould, Sarah Raybould, Adam Smith, Nipun Patney and Justin Sabharwal.

As part of an ongoing four-year volunteer partnership, IDEX Health & Science (IH&S) employees in Oak Harbor, Washington, have assisted local high school robotics students with several amazing projects, including helping build competition robots, developing a hat with ultrasonic sensors for a visually-impaired student, and designing a prosthetic arm for a 4-year old student.

Recently, IH&S employees helped students develop a Social Progress mobile phone application, which can be used by community organizations to track key metrics such as homeless population, income inequality, subsidized school lunches, crime rates, graduation rates and more.

Located about two hours north of Seattle, IH&S Oak Harbor manufactures fittings, tubing, and high-quality fluid transfer components and accessories for the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) markets. They recently extended their local partnership to develop STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) programs for FIRST Washington.

In collaboration with the IDEX Foundation, IH&S Oak Harbor granted the organization $7,500 to continue to develop the schools STEM initiatives.

Located in Washington State, FIRST Washington supports and engages today’s tech-native youth, inspiring them to build on their passions and preparing them to be the STEM leaders of tomorrow. With the mission to inspire all young people in Washington State to be science and technology leaders, the organization provides exciting mentor-based FIRST programs that inspire innovation, and foster self-confidence, communication, and leadership skills