2016 was a momentous year for Norbar.  It was a year in which we left our ‘home’ of the previous 34 years and moved to a larger site across Banbury at Wildmere Road.  It was also a year in which our oil and gas orientated distributors continued to struggle to find business leaving us with a gap to fill in our gearbox and ‘engineer to order’ departments.  As it turned out, it would take most of the year to replace that oil and gas business but certainly for our gearbox product process things were looking up considerably by the end of the year.  This is how the year shaped up, month by month.

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This month has seen Norbar exhibiting at the Abu Dhabi International Petroleum Exhibition and Conference, or ADIPEC to friends.  We are primarily here to support our distributors and grow the Norbar brand.

This is the most important show in the Middle East Oil and Gas sector by some margin and 2016 is the third consecutive year in a row that we’ve exhibited at ADIPEC.  The show was held against a backdrop of low oil prices, which have been weak for a long time.

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This year Norbar took part in the international WindEnergy Hamburg 2016 with a specially created stand for this international market.

The Hamburg WindEnergy is the worlds biggest meeting for the wind industry with this year’s result of about 35,000 visitors from 48 countries and 1,400 exhibitors from 34 countries.

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Those of you who have read my previous blogs and especially my March 2016 update will know that there are lots of changes to ISO 6789 coming at the end of the year. In our ISO Working Group, the combined experts from several international manufacturers and calibration accreditation bodies have created a comprehensive standard for the traceable calibration of both setting and indicating torque tools.

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As far back as the 1940’s Norbar has been working with industry to design market leading torque tightening and measuring equipment. This winning formula still rings true today, offering an extensive range of torque application tools to a variety of industries from aerospace and automotive to manufacturing and energy.

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Right back to the early days of when people were modifying simple bikes to deal with more aggressive terrain, mountain biking has become a mainstream sport and an act of pleasure for all ages and abilities – it should be mentioned that there are many different disciplines falling under cycling of which my focus is Gravity Biking, a sub category of Mountain Biking.

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One of the things about getting old is that you remember stuff from long ago. As we started packing our boxes at Beaumont Road we found an original blueprint of the 1965 alterations to our first building in North Bar Place. It brought back memories of that first premises. I can shut my eyes and see the stairs up to the offices, with Grandfather’s office at the top on the left and the general office a few steps down to the right where my father Ian worked. That memory made me wonder what Grandfather would have thought of the new building.

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Our Wheel Change Infographic – why and how it came about.   As new staff members join Norbar, they each have an induction session with the three Directors and my induction session is centred around the Norbar brand and marketing.  Following one of these inductions, a lady joining our electronic production team asked if she could see me because she had a marketing idea.  Much as I love ideas I approach them with some trepidation because it is often the case that the idea will be unworkable for a variety of reasons – cost and limited likely impact being the downfall of most ‘great ideas’.  Why don’t we do TV advertising or why don’t we sponsor a F1 car being favourites.   This lady’s idea was simple: why aren’t we telling people how to change their car wheels following a puncture?  She reasoned that as a torque wrench is required to do the job correctly, would this not be an opportunity to connect an issue that every motorist is a ...

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In the design of our EvoTorque® electronic torque tool we put prototypes thorough an astonishing amount of abuse in order to reduce the likelihood of them failing in the hands of operators.  Tools were repeatedly dropped at various angles, cables were stressed over thousands of cycles, tools sprayed with water etc.  However, we always understood that tools in the field would suffer mishaps that we could never have predicted or tested for.   Such a mishap occurred in the construction of the Atlantic Bridge in Panama where an EvoTorque had been hired for assembly of steelwork.  The story that has reached us is that while one worker was using the EvoTorque, another was moving a 10m long, 5 ton beam with a crane.  The load apparently swung towards the worker in such a way that the only thing preventing him being struck by the 5 ton beam was the EvoTorque.  We are pleased to report that, thanks to our tool getting in the path of the beam, the worker escaped what could have been ...

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I've been working at Norbar for 14 years, and for 10 of those I've been part of the company's Health & Safety committee. The committee meets once a month and comprises of 15 like-minded employees from a cross-section of departments.   One of the main functions of the meeting is to coordinate the schedule of risk assessments within Norbar. A risk assessment is a systematic and effective method of identifying risks and determining the most suitable means to minimise or remove them. At Norbar we endeavour to individually risk assess each department/area in the company every two years or upon significant change. Obviously as the company grows, so does the amount of assessments required, but it is a great testament to the committee members that for the most part we keep up!   Over the years I have completed numerous risk assessments, and it never ceases to amaze me how there is always improvements to be made to make our company a safer place. We have recently modified our risk assessment document ...

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