January 2004 

Below are listed featured articles from the January 2004 issue, Vol. 57, no. 1 © 2004 Barks Publications, Inc. ... see also January 2004 departments and columns and Previous issues.

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• Organized like a factory   A motor shop with 207 employees that never closes By Richard L. Nailen, RE., EA Engineering Editor

The Motor Repair “Factory” in the Hills—Smith Services in Princeton, West Virginia has grown in just 20 years into a 24-hour, 7-day, 200-plus-employee operation serving customers (primarily in the metals and paper industries) throughout a quarter of the U.S. Recently, the company invested $12 million in a new 27-acre site that includes as much floor space as four football fields and now features two 50-ton cranes in addition to numerous 25-ton, 10-ton, and jib cranes.

• Is a repaired motor less reliable?  Is there a reason to suppose a properly repaired motor is less reliable than a new machine?  Read an online summary (trilingual summary appears in the magazine) By Richard L. Nailen, RE., EA Engineering Editor

“Reliability” is gaining favor among industrial engineers as a key operational benchmark, and questions are now being raised as to whether repaired apparatus can be considered to be as reliable as new equipment. We come up with some workable definitions for electromechanical applications.

• Our annual five-year index, 1999-2003  A compilation, organized by subject headings, of all major articles that have appeared in EA over the past five years.   Compiled by the EA Staff

• The ins and outs of digital I/O Digital inputs and outputs give us the ability to get logical signals into and out of the controllers that we apply every day.  By David B. Tryling, EA Electronics Editor

• What the future may hold for electrical power control A conversation with the President of Schneider Electric North America  By Kevin Jones, EA Senior Editor

• Head protection is a top priority   12,000 persons sustain head injuries on the job every year.  By Richard B. Elsberry, EA Contributing Editor

• Is it time to sell your business?  The opportunity may come along only once, so make sure you do it right.  By William H. Wiersema, CPA, EA Contributing Editor

See also January 2004's Departments, columns