Hose Guidelines Benefit Industry

NAHAD volunteer Sam Foti talks about the association's 12-year effort to introduce hose assembly guidelines to makers, distributors and buyers of industrial hose

By Sam Foti, Contributing Editor -- Industrial Distribution, 12/1/2005

Hose Master Inc., a Cleveland-based manufacturer of corrugated and stripwound metal hose, was founded in 1982 by my father, Sam J. Foti, a specialty machine builder with more than 30 years of experience in the field of flexible metal hose. Three years later, industry leaders formed NAHAD—The Assn. for Hose & Accessories Distribution, to serve as the international trade association for the hose industry. Hose Master has been an active NAHAD member since the group's founding.

As president of Hose Master, I've had the privilege, over the past 12 years, of serving in various leadership capacities with NAHAD in the development of its Hose Assembly Guidelines project. Beginning in 1993, NAHAD dedicated itself to standardizing the processes for fabricating industrial hose assemblies, a function that the majority of hose distributors engage in as they provide hose products to end users. The first step in this process was to focus on the metal hose market, which has allowed me to play an active role since the project's inception.

Although a variety of manufacturing standards for hose and fittings had existed for years, the industry was lacking clear, unified guidelines for hose assembly fabrication, including: a standard glossary of terms; coupling methods; assembly cleaning, identification and packaging techniques; installation, handling and replacement guidelines; maintenance inspections; and fabrication and design guidance. The NAHAD board of directors committed to engaging in this process with the stated goals of improving the quality, reliability and safety of hose assemblies.

After seven years of labor by scores of member volunteers and dozens of companies, NAHAD introduced its formal Hose Assembly Guidelines in April 2000. A Web-based document, nearly 400 pages long, the Guidelines included extensive procedural recommendations for Industrial, Hydraulic, Composite, Corrugated Metal and Fluoropolymer hose assemblies. The Guidelines were now available for member use, serving as a training, education, reference and marketing tool.

However, the size of the document, coupled with the limitations of its use, brought the NAHAD board to decide in the spring of 2003 that the Guide-lines document needed to be redesigned and reformatted in order to be of most use to our member companies and to the industry. After having been intimately involved in the initial seven-year creation of the Hose Assembly Guidelines, I was asked to chair the new NAHAD Standards Committee and charged with making the Guide-lines a recognized industry "standard."

At NAHAD's 20th Anniversary Convention in Phoenix in 2004, following a year of planning, the Standards Committee presented its plan for redesigning the Guidelines and for creating a series of valuable publications, Web content and member services that would make the Guidelines a compelling business tool. In April 2005, we introduced the first phases of the project, with the introduction of five different Hose Assembly Specifications manuals for Industrial, Hydraulic, Composite, Corrugated Metal and Fluoropolymer hoses, as well as the new NAHAD Listed Members program, a unique recognition and marketing benefit provided to eligible NAHAD firms who meet performance compliance criteria.

The backbone of the recent two-year effort has been the support of nearly 285 NAHAD member volunteers, representing 150 member companies, serving on the Standards Committee or on one or more of the five Product Group Technical Teams (manufacturing engineers) and Resource Development Teams (manufacturers and distributors).

These committed NAHAD members will continue to serve in the development and ongoing review of additional Guidelines products, including the new Hose Assembly Design Web site, the Hose Assembly Fabrication Web site, and a series of online Certificate Training Programs designed to provide convenient employee training programs for each of the five product group areas. We anticipate delivering these new services at NAHAD's 2006 Annual Convention in Colorado Springs, Colo., April 8–12.

One of the many unique benefits of having engaged in this process over the past 12 years is observing first-hand the level of participation, involvement and support that our member manufacturers and distributors have exhibited, working together to meet the needs of our end users, with the goal of improving hose assembly safety and reliability. It is no easy task to get competing firms to join together in support of a common goal—especially when it involves the selection of hoses, fittings and methods. However, we believe that helping distributors to be more effective and successful in serving their customers, and helping customers to be better informed about hose assemblies, will ultimately benefit all participants in the channel.

I am indebted to all of the member volunteers who have enabled us to achieve what has been delivered to date, and what we intend to deliver in the next few months. My special thanks and deep appreciation go to my Standards Committee team leaders, who have labored consistently over the past 29 months to work through the sometimes tedious, sometimes exciting, and always rewarding task of moving this process forward: Steve Gray, Manuli Hydraulics, Inc.; Joe Lark, Monroe Rubber & Plastic Supply Co.; Dan Ahuero, GHX, Inc.; and Rob Lyons, TIPCO Technologies, Inc., supported by NAHAD staff members Robb Fish, program manager, and Joseph Thompson, executive vice president.

The time and effort that Hose Master has committed to this process over the past 12 years has not been insignificant. However, the sense of fulfillment and value that we've received back has been enormous. I encourage all NAHAD members to become active in this program and to use the Guidelines to their benefit in the years ahead. I promise that those efforts will reap rewards.