The new release of the iQ Batching WorkCenter features powerful new cost tools for analysis across plants and time. With the ability to see cost averages across business units or chart costs per plant, you can identify where your plant operations are leaking money and act fast. Email us back if you are interested in learning more!

Featuring…

Enterprise View Cost Metrics
Especially useful for executive or senior management, iQ’s powerful Enterprise View lets you pick-and-choose cost metrics such as average cost, delta, and % in-tolerance per material across business units, with ability to drill down to the plant level. Now you can quickly identify where you are losing money.

Charting Material Costs
iQ’s easy to use control charts lets you chart a plant’s batched material amounts vs. the mix design. Now you have the option to chart material costs (including cement, mineral, aggregate, chemical) as well, plus the cost of deviating from the mix design amounts. This allows you to visually identify costly batches and drill-down further to the ticket itself by double-clicking the batch point on the chart.

Washington, DC – March 16, 2015 – Hanley Wood, the premier information, media, event, and strategic marketing services company serving the residential, commercial design and construction industries, has announced the winners of the 2015 Most Innovative Products (MIP) at World of Concrete Awards.

Presented annually in conjunction with the World of Concrete, the MIP Award program showcases many products exhibited at the show. The MIP award program allows World of Concrete attendees and audiences of CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION, MASONRY CONSTRUCTION, AND THE CONCRETE PRODUCER an opportunity to vote for the products they judge as innovative. Winners are also selected by a panel of industry experts, many of whom serve on the World of Concrete Educational Advisory Board, as well as by the editors of CONCRETE CONSTRUCTION, MASONRY CONSTRUCTION, and THE CONCRETE PRODUCER. Winning products are chosen based on the innovation they bring to the industry.

“There’s an amazing amount of innovation going on in the industry today, as this collection of new products demonstrates,” noted Bill Palmer, Editorial Director of Hanley Wood’s Commercial Construction Group.

This year’s products were grouped into nine categories. Information about each entry is available at www.votemip.com.

2015 MIP Award winners include:

Business Tools and Software
Experts Choice: Quadrel iQ and mGuage
Editors Choice: ProContractor by Viewpoint
Industry Choice: AboutTime WorkMax

Come see us speak at NRMCA ConcreteWorks – 4:15 Mon. 9/22/14, Indianapolis.

Batching Variability and Plant Benchmarking

Farro and I will be giving a talk on Batching Variability and Plant Benchmarking. We were moved to give this talk given our extensive experience in analyzing producer batching data over the last year. Thanks to iQ, our batching ops work center that debuted last summer, detecting and understanding trends in batching performance from operation to operation has become much easier. Over the last year, a big step in selling or implementing iQ for customers was demonstrating the product’s ability to assess their batching operations; often both the customer and ourselves would be fascinated by the snapshot that iQ presented. Nor could we believe how variable producer batching was, regardless of the size or location of the operation! For across the board: who knew that adding excess water (above the mix design amount) was so common? Why were the batchmen randomly holding back so much water? Was management aware that a particular regions batches consistently had cement overage – that’s a lot of wasted dollars!

However through this forest of variability, iQ also highlighted golden nuggets of best practices. For every operation, there was at least 1-2 plants that had model performance: that is to say that they were consistently meeting ASTM standards and accurately batching to their mix design targets. If one golden plant is already performing so well in reality, then certainly this was a reachable standard for the rest of the operations. And so we came up with the approach of plant benchmarking: leveraging your best practice into your standard! That is to say, if you are doing it here, then copy it and do it elsewhere! The potential dollar savings, not to mention dramatic improvements in product and service, are huge!

Anyway we hope that you will be able to join us at ConcreteWorks or else come by to say hello! For more information please visit ConcreteWorks website.