WEMCO working to make distribution life easier

The American Welding Society's Welding Equipment Manufacturers Committee is working to make life easier for distributors with a drive toward the standardization of information.

A WEMCO subcommittee on information technology is taking a leading position to study and make recommendations on standards for bar coding, billing and cost language and the transfer mechanisms for bills and costs.

Don Mottinger, president of Superior Products Inc. (www.superiorprod.com) and chairman of the committee, said at WEMCO's annual meeting that a bar coding system—which has been established in many other consumer and business areas —can save equipment manufacturers and distributors a lot of money, if only someone could come up with a simple, standardized system.

"Bar coding is the neutral ground between us," Mottinger said, noting that individual companies now post their own unique bar coding on their products and cylinders, resulting in confusion.

"A lot of money is being wasted because we're tripping over our own feet. We're now at the tipping point at which we need a [standardized] bar code system, and our customers are demanding it," Mottinger said.

In addition to a standard bar coding system, Mottinger's committee is working on developing a mutual language for billing and costs to further reduce confusion in the distribution world.

Along with that standard language for billing and costs, the committee is looking at—and looking for—ideas that would lead to standardized methods to transfer bills and payments.

Mottinger acknowledged that bar coding and bar code standards have a bad history with distributors, and that previous efforts left bruises.

"Cylinder bar coding [efforts that were made a few years ago] scared distributors, and they're not over it," he said, adding that small- to mid-sized distributors are afraid to invest $10,000 to $15,000 for a bar code system that could be useable for only two or three years.

So, the Information Technology Committee is moving slowly, trying to get plenty of opinions about how to proceed and, eventually, how to develop a standardized bar code system.

WEMCO is a closely-knit AWS committee, but it's also a hospitable organization and it is looking for more members.

Dennis Brown is the head of WEMCO's Membership subcommittee, and he extolled the work that WEMCO does and the value it provides to distributors.

Besides providing a seal of approval for the welding equipment that distributors sell, Brown, vice president for national accounts for Weiler Corp. (www.weilercorp.com) said WEMCO adds a degree of professionalism while providing safeguards for U.S. businesses in that it looks out for the interests of U.S. businesses on the world stage. One of the ways that it does that is through its subcommittee on International Standards.

Anyone interested in contributing to the WEMCO Information Technology Committee's research and development on standards for bar codes, prices and costs, can contact Mottinger, and anyone interested in joining WEMCO can contact Brown. Contact information for both

Mottinger and Brown is available through their company's Internet sites and through WEMCO (www.aws.org/wemco).