The Monitor

Production Process Insights

Employee-Owner Profiles - Rich Gaffney

Posted by Sentry Equipment on 6/14/17 9:52 AM

Employee-Owner Profiles is a new feature that will highlight members of our team. As an employee-owned company, Sentry Equipment believes that employee ownership makes a difference. Our employee-owners are dedicated to hard work, positive results and continual improvement and innovation to provide our customers the highest quality products and services.

Rich Gaffney loved to play with Legos as a kid, and he wanted to be a machinist like his dad or an architect like Mike Brady from The Brady Bunch. He liked the idea of building something with his hands that would last a long time.

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Topics: Company News

Steam Sampling 101: Basics and What Really Matters

Posted by Jeff McKinney on 6/7/17 2:00 PM

What does it take to design a practical and reliable steam sampling system? Find out what you need to know to practically implement steam sampling guidelines in your process environment. 

Steam sampling is sometimes viewed as a necessary evil in a process plant. However, the absence of steam due to a boiler shutdown makes for a bad day at a refinery, petrochemical or specialty chemical plant. But one size doesn’t fit all, and a number of variables must be considered to design and implement a practical, reliable steam sampling system.

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Topics: Power, Downstream, Steam & Water

Employee-Owner Profiles - Joe Kreinus

Posted by Sentry Equipment on 5/31/17 2:00 PM

Employee-Owner Profiles is a new feature that will highlight members of our team. As an employee-owned company, Sentry Equipment believes that employee ownership makes a difference. Our employee-owners are dedicated to hard work, positive results and continual improvement and innovation to provide our customers the highest quality products and services.

Growing up in West Allis, WI, Joe Kreinus learned three lessons in life: Work hard, do what’s right and earn what you get. Those values are now the backbone of his work philosophy as the Director of Applications Engineering and Customer Service at Sentry Equipment.

“What I like most is meeting and exceeding customers’ expectations,” he says. “I want to help them be comfortable with the relationship they have with us and develop a close connection.”

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Topics: Company News

Employee-Owner Profiles - Karen Jones

Posted by Sentry Equipment on 5/24/17 2:00 PM

Employee-Owner Profiles is a new feature that will highlight members of our team. As an employee-owned company, Sentry Equipment believes that employee ownership makes a difference. Our employee-owners are dedicated to hard work, positive results and continual improvement and innovation to provide our customers the highest quality products and services.

Commercial Operations Manager Karen Jones grew up in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, as one of six children in a loud house that favored shouting over each other to listening to each other, with neighbors who were rumored to be connected to the Mob. In other words, a far cry from the cornfields and pastures of southeastern Wisconsin.

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Topics: Company News

How Representative Sampling Can Improve Food Safety

Posted by John Powalisz on 5/10/17 2:30 PM

Expanding regulations. Foodborne illness outbreaks and product recalls. Intensifying demand for food and beverage safety. The challenges in food and beverage production are growing more intense every year. How can you keep up?

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Topics: Food & Beverage

Employee-Owner Profiles - Marcease Warren

Posted by Sentry Equipment on 5/3/17 3:00 PM

Employee-Owner Profiles is a new feature that will highlight members of our team. As an employee-owned company, Sentry Equipment believes that employee ownership makes a difference. Our employee-owners are dedicated to hard work, positive results and continual improvement and innovation to provide our customers the highest quality products and services.

Marcease Warren joined Sentry Equipment 14 years ago through the engineering co-op program at Marquette University in Milwaukee, where he was majoring in mechanical engineering. When he drove out to the company headquarters 45 minutes West of Milwaukee for the first time, the Palatine, Ill. native felt like he was leaving everything familiar behind. But he was immediately impressed by the welcoming atmosphere from the top down.

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Topics: Company News

Do You Trust Your Process Analytics?

Posted by AJ Percival on 4/26/17 3:40 PM

Since a steam and water analysis system (SWAS) is critical to any power plant, any variation from optimal operation and consistent steam and water sampling can lead to problems that cause added time and expense.

The burning question is: Do you trust your process analytics?

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Topics: Power, Steam & Water

How to Understand the Cation Resin Lifespan

Posted by John Powalisz on 4/19/17 4:16 PM

Cation resin can last a few days or several months, and it can be difficult to predict the lifespan even in ideal conditions. So how do you know if your resin is still functional at any given time? What does it take to prolong the life of resin – and how do you know when it’s time to refill or regenerate it? It all starts with understanding the cation resin lifespan and the many factors that affect it. Read on so you’ll never get caught with depleted resin again.

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Topics: Power, Steam & Water

The Best Way to Sample Flour for Quality Control

Posted by Tod Myers on 4/12/17 10:15 AM

A flour mill operations manager often starts the day by checking processing data in the lab where product samples are tested to assess the mill’s performance and check for any issues such as contamination.

Proper flour sampling can make or break quality control analysis in a flour milling operation. A quality control test is only as good as the tested sample, which is only as good as the flour sampling technique used to obtain a true representative sample that has the characteristics of the whole lot or batch that’s tested.

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Topics: Food & Beverage, Solids & Powder

How Sweetener Sampler Eliminates Potential Contamination

Posted by John Powalisz on 4/5/17 11:00 AM

Just as trusted ingredients are critical to a food production operation; automated sampling is a critical part of any ingredient manufacturer’s processes. A nutrition and health food ingredient supplier to the food, beverage and dietary supplement industries needed to analyze representative samples of its product: polydextrose, which is a sweetener ingredient used in bakery products, beverages and baby food.

This food supplier’s customers requested it use modern biological contamination sampling techniques of its product to ensure quality.

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Topics: Food & Beverage