The following is an interview with the editor of Enterprise Minnesota and Tom Schabel, CEO, Alexandria Industries. (December 2014) You’ve devoted an extraordinary amount of time and energy around creating and implementing a values policy for your company. Why? Three years ago, we developed a shared vision for the next five years for Alexandria Industries. We talked about what kind of legacy we would like to leave behind. In the process of creating our shared vision, we believed there was also a need to bring stronger focus on our values, as well. We’d always done strategic planning, but creating our five-year vision was an interesting process. We asked ourselves what we wanted to create with the organization. While our leadership understood the reason for this work, the process took us to a new level to agree on that shared vision. For us, the power that came with that work was a defining

Aluminum may be a better choice than stainless steel for some applications.

The North American aluminium extrusions market is currently on an upswing with construction starting to pick up just when the light metal is making inroads in the automotive market. The big question is whether there will be any supply bottlenecks as demand ramps up.

Solar Industry (September 2014) In today’s complex solar project management environment, selecting supply chain partners is just as important as executing project construction. Renewable energy projects require a multitude of materials from a variety of manufacturers and suppliers. One key element of large-scale PV installations – racking and support systems – should not be an afterthought when it comes to vetting suppliers. Whether the project developer selects the aluminum extruded racking system supplier or leaves that decision up to the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor, choosing the best supplier to support your PV panels is vital to project success and helps avoid costly overruns and delayed installation. Project developers – and the EPC managers who serve them – should give careful thought to how to mitigate their supply chain risk and avoid costly, last-minute changes during installation out in the field, often in remote locations. The process of screening

Product Design & Development (July 2014) To better control the increasing product development costs without sacrificing quality, medical device OEMs are turning to aluminum instead of other more costly materials to manufacture both their new and existing components. The following 10 tips will help manufacturers improve their designs for aluminum medical components earlier in the product development process, lower their overall manufacturing costs, and speed product time to market. 1. Determine design intent. When developing new components, designers need to fully understand the end usage and share this information with their aluminum component manufacturer. The more a manufacturer understands about the product’s end use, the more constructive design guidance they can offer as there are different ways to meet design challenges more effectively, efficiently, and economically, when using aluminum rather than alternative materials. For instance, rolled shapes riveted together can be replaced by a single aluminum extruded profile, resulting in

Tom Mason, Editor-in-Chief, Enterprise Minnesota (November 2013) The urgency of attracting qualified workers to American manufacturing was underscored again this fall when the marquee event of Alexandria Industries’ annual Customer Leadership Conference was a showcase about how Alexandria, MN is earning a national reputation for its results-oriented public/private partnership effort to find and retain employees for area manufacturers.The annual conference was held earlier this fall at the Best Western Plus Hotel in Bloomington, across the street from the Mall of America. Tom Schabel, CEO of Alexandria Industries, says that including a workforce panel represented an easy decision when he developed the meeting’s agenda. He had already completed about 25 of his annual customer visits (which this year will number 43). “I always ask, what are the challenges you are running into? What are the biggest obstacles (you face)? This year twenty-five out of 25 said one of their key problems

Sean Fenske, Editor-in-Chief, Medical Design Technology (October 2013) Medical device designers can select from any array of component fabrication processes for the necessary parts for a project, such as molding, machining, and even 3D printing. While extrusion may be most often associated with medical tubing, it serves as yet another method device developers need to consider for their needs. The process presents advantages that may be more cost effective than other component fabrication methods, depending on the type of part necessary. “Due to the fact that it is a continuous process, extrusion typically is best suited for applications and products that similarly are continuous (long continuous lengths), but it can also discretized (cut pieces),” explains Aaron Updegrove, marketing manager for the Life Sciences Business at Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics (www.plastics.saint-gobain.com). “However, extrusion is also an effective manufacturing process for producing thin films that can later be processed into discrete pieces. An