Where We've Been; Where We Are Going

The success of any association depends on its members’ involvement. A great place to start in getting involved with The Powder Coating Institute is to serve on a committee. It is the perfect place to have your voice heard within the industry. Where do you fit? Where can you make an impact? PCI’s committees met at our annual meeting in September. Take a look at the summaries below to see where you might fit best. Then, call us at 800-988-COAT to get started. We need you. And when our members benefit, the entire industry benefits!

The committee planned about 20 events for the 2015 calendar, which included Powder 101 and 202 Workshops around the country as well as numerous webinars. The committee ensures that presentation materials and exam questions are updated. In addition, they established the foundations of the Roadshow Program. The Program will be presented to numerous associations as conference materials to promote the benefits of powder coating.

Preliminary efforts are underway to establish an individual certification program for applicators.

For 2016, a similar training calendar is in the works in addition to launching the Roadshow Program.

This committee has successfully managed our PCI tradeshows over the years, which included site selection and special events, in addition to the conference presentations and speaker selection. Beginning in 2016, this committee will work under the Education and Development committee as the Events Subcommittee.

Their initial work in this new structure will be to oversee the Powder Coating 2016 Technical Conference in Atlanta, GA in April.

Historically, this committee has worked with other organizations such as ASTM, EPA, and OSHA by providing technical and application information on powder coatings, such as test methods and performance capabilities. Many of this committee’s responsibilities over the years have been absorbed by other committees. However, more recently this committee oversees the PCI scholarship program and has awarded three this year.

This committee assists PCI by actively promoting the awareness and appreciation of powder coating. In addition to supporting the association in the publication of communication materials, this year they launched the PCI Cost Estimator, a liquid to powder cost estimator as a mobile app.

For 2016, they are working on generating a Why Powder commercial video for B2B and B2C markets. They have a list of new, fresh ideas for promoting powder coating technology.

As the committee that defines member benefits, this team supports membership growth, such as with their targeted OEM and Custom Coater growth program. This resulted in 26 new custom coaters and 19 new OEM members in the last year (also, six new supplier members). Members of this committee also produce the Membership Memo column in each issue of Powder Coated Tough. The membership committee is actively developing category specific member benefit values that may be more clearly articulated to members as well as assisting existing members to take advantage of services, networking and marketing opportunities provided by PCI.

In 2016, there will be reviews of member retention efforts, member value package, and our database structure.

This committee has recently worked on re-establishing the guidelines for our quarterly statistical reports. Our powder producing and application equipment members participate in this report effort.

A new summary document explaining this process is almost complete. In addition, this group will help pursue a plan to generate more accurate market data through PCI resources on a regular basis, worldwide, in an effort to establish PCI as the global resource for powder coating market data.

This committee is actively looking for new members, so step up in 2016 and help them out.

This committee has completed and obtained the Board of Director’s approval for the document: A Consumer’s Guide to TGIC in Powder Coatings.

They are currently working on An Applicator’s Guide to TGIC in Powder Coatings. They work with ASTM, OSHA, NFPA, and ISO, a real value on behalf of our membership.

The Custom Coater committee has worked this past year to set up a new Resource Center for PCI’s educational materials, beginning with our library of Tech Briefs. Work will be done in the next several months to update the Tech Briefs. The Resource Center will house the updated Tech Briefs and continue to be a repository for many of our additional documents. This team also works on the planning of the annual Custom Coater Forum held in Las Vegas each year.

In an effort to broaden their voice in PCI in 2016, this committee plans to generate a quarterly newsletter/eblast to highlight custom coater members, best practices, and promote greater participation from this member group.