Clow Valve Company wins McWane Ergo Cup competition

Clow Valve Company – Oskaloosa, Iowa

Advances to National Ergo Cup in Orlando

Team members from the Clow Valve Company in Oskaloosa won first place in the sixth annual Ergo Cup competition sponsored by its parent company, McWane, Inc. The winning team included members from Clow Valve Company in Corona, California. The Clow team will represent McWane at the National Ergo Cup competition in Orlando, Florida, on March 21, 2016.

The Clow Oskaloosa team members are Chad Bollinger, hydrant assembly; Kyle Huelsman, product engineer; Chris Prendergast, continuous improvement coordinator; and Chris Stanley, tool room. Each team member received a $1,000 gift card.

Clow’s winning project was a custom designed and built assembly station that eliminates the manual intensive requirements of inserting brass inlets into wet barrel hydrants. The new assembly station allows team members to produce hydrants with reduced ergonomic stress to their upper bodies, necks, arms, shoulders, elbows, and hands.

The Ergo Cup provides companies a forum to highlight their successful ergonomic solutions. The solutions must be a newly created device or process, created or significantly improved through study and experimentation, is simple and straightforward, provide an attractive return on investment and explains its financial success, and significantly reduces or eliminates ergonomic risk.

This year a record 169 McWane team members from 17 locations competed.