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Recently K-Tron International was included in an AP story on "Europe's tough antitrust stance" towards Microsoft. The thrust of the story was how "most companies do not have enough market muscle to require their customers to buy a broad sweep of their products, as Microsoft has."

It was encouraging to see a news reporter expand a business story to include a wider scope of manufacturers. However, it was equally discouraging to see once again how little news people understand about the process industries. This is how the article described our business:

"K-Tron makes machines that crush or weigh objects and tubes that feed material into other industrial machines. Its customers are global and its factories are in the United States, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and China."

This awkward description starts off with "crush or weigh objects," a muddle of crushers (see Gundlach, Penn Crusher or Jeffrey) and weigh feeders. These machines are about as far apart as you can get in process equipment. Then, in an effort to avoid using a technical-sounding term (perhaps "pneumatic conveyors") we are treated to the inelegant-sounding "tubes that feed material into other industrial machines."

It's a mystery how such inexact descriptions are supposed to clarify things for the reader. The problem is that neither the public, nor the journalists who enlighten them, have the vocabulary—the mental images—necessary for a clear description of the process industries. When people think of manufacturing—if they think about it at all—they seem to have this image of cars moving along Henry Ford's assembly line.

This is a Problem for Your Industry
When the popular media fail to explain your industry adequately, the public has no clue how much they depend on the materials you process. In an age of instant pundits and global news, it's dangerous for people to be uniformed about your business.

You Can Help Right Here on this Blog
I'd like to enlist your help through this blog to improve the situation. With your help we can take the public on a tour of our plants and show them how our processes and equipment provide the materials that form, feed or improve our material world. You can contribute a story: sign up to become an author (we even offer prizes), comment here on this or other blog articles, or just send an email to don@powderandbulk.com and I'll post a story for you. Tell us about your process, and the next time a neighbor asks you what you do, you can show them.