May you live in interesting times.  Well 2017 was certainly that!  For SilcoTek Coatings it was a year all about making it interesting, and we mean good, for the customer.  Let's review shall we?

It's Really About the Coating Process, Not Food

All manufacturing processes are chock full of variability.  If someone tells you otherwise, they're kidding you.  There are lots of analogies I could use to compare our coating processes to, but for this blog post let's go with a restaurant analogy.  We've all been to that questionable fast Food place.  You know the one where you get the food fast, it's cheap, but ultimately you pay in either lousy taste or about an hour later when your GI tract is tied in a knot.  Why do I keep going back there! (Note to self, potential New Year resolution...)

At the other end of the scale there's that place with great food but after what seems like a millennia you finally get the snobby waiter to serve you.  By the end of the night you've had good food, but you're afraid you've got blood clots from sitting for 4 hours. 

Then there's that place where you know things are firing on all cylinders right when you walk in the door.  Great energy, fast efficient service, good food and in the end an excellent dining experience.  This year SilcoTek became that kind of place, only for coatings not chow.  

Manufacturing continues to improve and evolve the process.  This year, like a great chef tweaking a good recipe to make it perfect, our engineers and manufacturing teams have improved processes to make a better product.  Lead times have dropped to an average of about 5 days and the manufacturing floor looks immaculate and organized thanks to 5S.  Even on the busiest days, the floor looks calm, well organized and efficient.  

R&D and IP  

R&D played a big part in improving the coating quality.  They went back to the drawing board and found new ways to improve the coating, especially in corrosion applications.  When they weren't making great coatings better, they went to work on developing new coatings.  

We released a new coating, Dursox™, specifically for semiconductor manufacturing applications and will soon release a new super hydrophobic coating that has excellent non-stick qualities.

All that brain power needs protection.  To that end we now have 20 patents relating to coatings and manufacturing of coatings, which help to protect our IP and allow us to offer licensing of our process.  

Marketing and Sales, Content and Customers

Our Marketing and Sales Team focused on making it easier for the customer to find and buy our coatings.  Our sales team spent a lot of hours at conferences and trade shows talking with thousands of new and old customers.  The team continues to actively bring on new sales reps (We now have reps in the EU, UK, Korea, China, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan).  The team is dedicated to working with customers and help them select the right coating and assist customers in developing new applications and products. 

For Marketing it's been all about content.  We've spent many hours trying to harness all the customer applications, papers and our 250 plus years of combined experience into user friendly and informative webinars, tech literature pieces, whitepapers, ebooks, and presentations.  We continue to focus on getting the message out but in ways that users find interesting and helpful.

It's all paid off in satisfied customers and new applications.  In fact next year we'll be talking about how our customers are discovering our coatings and using them in new applications. 

Next year our team will continue to offer great content and help our customers discover new and innovative applications for our coatings.  We'll be offering a new series of coating ebooks with topics ranging from medical diagnostics, HPLC, fouling and mold release.  Also our popular webinars will be back.  We'll be discussing subjects like HPLC coating solutions, coking and fouling solutions, how to sell our coatings (targeted at value added resellers), and more.  This blog will discuss topics ranging from customer focused coating benefits to a deep dive into new coatings and processes.  We'll also take a look at some of the background of what it takes to develop a coating and how we go about doing what we do.  Overall I'm sure our customers and readers will find 2018 a fascinating and yes interesting time.  (hopefully not the bad kind discussed in the Chinese proverb)...

Here's to a happy, healthy, and profitable new year!  Our readership has doubled in 2017, thanks for being part of our blog community!