CSI® has just finished another great year with a lot of excitement and positive results in the marketplace through the growth of our Lustra™ Brand of car wash cleaning and protection products.  Here at our facility, in DePere, WI, we have also had a lot of positive changes to help increase our capacity, improve our quality, and better serve our customers.

As an industry leader CSI® - Lustra is very proud of its state-of-art manufacturing facility.  Visitors are always amazed at how automated and technologically advanced our development and manufacturing processes are.  On top of that, the professionalism and cleanliness of the plant reinforces the “quality first” reputation we have earned in the car wash industry.  As one of many long-term employees, I can say that we still think of this as "the new building", but actually we have been in this facility for eight years now.  Our attention to detail goes beyond the products we make, and that shows in the professionalism of our headquarters.

Even though we still have a “new, state-of-art” facility we're involved in a continuous process to upgrade our manufacturing systems with an eye to the future. To help produce all of our cleaning and protection products in a more efficient manner, we have added new mix tanks, and most impressively a new 'mass flow' measuring system and computer controlled manifolds to accurately move raw materials from bulk storage to the desired mix tank.  This process further assures us of being able to supply consistent quality products from batch to batch. We look forward to a day when we will be able to make a batch of product completely controlled by computer without jeopardizing our high quality standards.

Increasing automation to make our plant more efficient is very important to help us maintain our position as a truly cost effective manufacturer.  In the current economic environment it is necessary for us on a daily basis to offset the continuing escalation in raw material pricing which we don't see abating in the near future.

Becoming more automated has also helped us improve our formulation and manufacturing flexibility.  We are keenly aware of trends in the car wash industry and are constantly reviewing our product line to make sure we offer the car wash operator products and programs to help them achieve maximum success.  Lately we've seen an increase in the movement toward products with greater amounts of "show" for the customers, including color, fragrance, and foam.  This is taking place in not only the protection products but in cleaning products as well. We have been able to respond by introducing new, or in some cases re-formulated, products to meet our customers’ increasing expectations.  In addition, there is a continuing focus on making our products more concentrated to reduce freight and handling costs which is important in this time of rapidly rising energy prices.  CSI – Lustra was one of the first solutions manufactures to come to the market with Ultra Concentrates, and we have continued to make advancements in that product category.  We have several really exciting breakthroughs that will be introduced to the market in early 2006.

On a similar note, CSI has always been known for providing high quality liquid products to the car wash market. Overall, we believe that our liquid products serve the customer best in most cases. We have found that mixing powders manually in the equipment room can lead to inconsistencies in solution strength and thus variations in operator costs and cleaning results.   In addition mixing powders can be messy and time consuming and divert the operator's focus from the main job of washing cars.  That being said, it is our goal to provide our customers with options that fit their needs as long as we do so without sacrificing one of our core quality principles. In accordance with that principle we manufacture one of the highest performing powder detergents in the market.  For those long-time powder users we have designed the Clear-Mix 55, an automated mixing system for use in the car wash’s equipment room to better insure consistent product mixture from batch-to-batch.  Operators simply dump in a pre-measured “powder-charge”, push the button, and walk away.  The Clear-Mix system produces the same solution mixture every time.

We also strongly believe in developing products that are more user and environmentally friendly.  We do not make or sell any products that contain HF, ABF or any version of acidic fluorides.  CSI® has taken a strong stand against such products and believe that they have the potential of harming application equipment, the wash facility and potentially the customers vehicle and unless
handled carefully could injure car wash employees.

Our Lab (my bailiwick) has also implemented several upgrades with new equipment designed for product analysis, as well as research & development projects.  We develop and manufacture all of our own products in house to assure the highest performance rate and tightest quality control possible.  We inspect every raw material brought in and (of course) test each batch of product throughout the manufacturing and packaging process.  CSI® is an ISO-9001-2000 registered company, and our ISO certification has helped us put the systems in place and establish the discipline to make quality products and satisfying customer needs a company wide daily focus.

In addition to our actual manufacturing process’s we have also upgraded our accounting software for more direct interfaces between sales and manufacturing. This has helped us in several ways.  We are able to improve inventory turns, become more of a just in time manufacturer and still maintain timely shipping of products to our worldwide distributor network.

Bio: Rick Martens is one of two Senior Chemists at CSI® and has been with the company since 1987.  He has a strong background in water science and has formulated many of the Lustra™ products.  He has established many of the quality assurance systems used in the CSI® lab, along with proprietary testing protocols that have helped CSI® become a leader in the car wash chemical industry.