All work and no play? No way

What would summer be without a vacation? Not much fun.

What are employees when they don’t get a break? Not very efficient, according to enough reports and dissertations to convince even the most hard-nosed manager. More time spent on the job doesn’t always translate to greater and better output, it seems.

But when times are tough, and they have been, with the recovery ongoing but still lacking traction, it’s the rare employee who fights hard for his summer vacation if he perceives that management frowns on those who “need a break.” According to the poll at PlasticsToday.com, 36% of the respondents (as of this writing) responded to the question, “How much time off did you take this summer?” with the answer, “Vacation?”

On a promising note, 23% indicated they took two weeks or more. Plenty of manufacturers close their plants for a week or two in the summer, and this year was no exception.

Hopefully you found time to energize your batteries, and to ensure your employees were able to do the same. If you missed out, then you really ought to give it a try. Your family, friends, and even your employer will appreciate it.
 
•  •  •

My own vacation was great, thanks, but it also was great to return and find waiting e-mails from a few hundred people who wanted to share details on the great materials, machinery, and services their companies intend to display during next month’s K 2010 trade show in Düsseldorf, Germany. Starting in this issue, and continuing in dramatic fashion in next month’s magazine, we distill the best of these from the 3000-plus exhibitors into information you can use to help plan your visit to the show. 

Some clear trends on those developments have already started to emerge:
• The aim for sustainability, be it energy saved, use of renewable materials, or some other strategy, remains a driver of new technology.  
• If you didn’t think there were any more actions you could complete in the mold, well, you were wrong.
• The shift to electrically powered processing machinery is really only getting started as the rate of this shift increases.
• This vibrant industry took the recession’s body blows, shook them off, and kept on innovating.
Online, we have much more to help you prepare for the K show. Bookmark k.plasticstoday.com and visit that site for daily updates on the events and developments surrounding K 2010. Subscribe to our K Advisor e-newsletter for a one-stop summary of these developments, plus up-to-date information on travel arrangements and more.
The K preview is at the center of this issue, but there is much more here, including top-notch articles on Brazil’s ongoing boom, interviews with experts on two sides of the bisphenol A issue, an update on natural-fiber-reinforced compounds, and the third article in our series on custom molder Xten’s efforts to grow and improve. Enjoy those articles and the rest of your magazine, and keep us posted on your own great efforts at [email protected].