Sealed
and delivered
New
ideas can sometimes come in strange forms and in unlikely places.
Take Dale Kitelinger, who found inspiration in the back of his
truck.
He
and Steve Wiswell work for the state Department of Transportation's
Travel Survey Shop, a bureau responsible for maintaining those
sensors embedded in state highways that track how many cars travel
on Wisconsin roads and how much the cars weigh.
WisDOT
has hundreds of these sensors scattered around the state, and
the agency uses the data they produce to help determine where
to spend its $1 billion roadway improvement budget. The only problem
is that the state installs or replaces about 100 of these sensors
each year, and the sealant WisDOT once used to keep them in place
took at least 24 hours to dry, leading to unwanted lane closures.
To
make matters worse, three years ago the sealant manufacturer changed
the glue's formula, and the Travel Survey Shop discovered that
the new product damaged some sensors or caused others to wear
out prematurely. This meant that WisDOT had to replace even more
sensors, compounding the number of lane closures, to say nothing
of increased costs since each replacement runs up a $2,000 tab.
It
got so bad that the sealant problem threatened to shut down installation
crews for an entire summer.
Then
Kitelinger thought of the new pickup truck he bought a few years
before. He'd had a spray-in bedliner installed, and he remembered
talking to the manufacturer about the bedliner sealant, which
had dried quickly and maintained its seal, said Joe Nestler, WisDOT's
chief of State Highway Program Development.
The
sealant was a product known as TDC 200, manufactured by Fabick
Inc. of Madison. Kitelinger and Wiswell got a sample of TDC 200
and tested it out on a site in Dane County.
It
worked, sealing in hours, doing no damage to the sensor and holding
its place across a wide range of temperatures. The sealant didn't
provide just a quick fix, either, as it held up over the long-term
and even extended the life of the sensors, Nestler said.
"To
me, this is really championing," he said. "This is a
group of folks who are constantly looking to improve. They're
constantly running into problems and refusing to quit."
Based
on the success and additional positive tests, WisDOT last year
made a wholesale shift to TDC 200. The switch has helped a local
manufacturer, shortened lane closure times and prolonged the life
of the freeway sensors.
The
agency has estimated that Wiswell and Kitelinger saved $43,000
in the first year and as much as $130,000 for every year thereafter.
Word
has quickly spread. A national supplier to the traffic engineering
industry verified the success of TDC 200 and put it in the annual
product catalog.
Nestler,
who manages Wiswell and Kitelinger and who authorized the durability
tests, said he's not surprised by the innovation. Three years
ago, for instance, Wiswell designed a chip to combat the year
2000 computer problem, saving the state $500,000, Nestler said.
"This
isn't an apple falling from a tree kind of thing," he said.
"They're coming up with ideas big and small all the time."
| Publisher's Note
| Innovator Awards | Finalist
Index |
|
Finalist Links | Special
Sections | Daily Reporter
|
©
2003 Daily Reporter Publishing Co., All Rights Reserved.
