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Annual Meeting of Ductile Iron Society, June 2001
James D. Mullins
This presentation was made at the society's recent annual meeting to show members how successful one of the ongoing programs has been. The Ductile Iron Marketing Group (DIMG) has been in existence for more than 16 years. Its purpose is help foundry members and their suppliers by increasing the size of the total ductile iron engineered castings market through dissemination of information to engineers, designers and buyers of metal parts. It is difficult at best to estimate the impact that the group has had; however the market for ductile iron castings has shown relatively steady growth almost every year. Many other metals have seen overall market declines. Whereas ductile iron has replaced many steel forgings, fabrications and castings as well as has been the material of choice to replace gray iron and aluminum castings.
The Ductile Iron Society along with Rio Tinto Iron & Titanium America are the principal contributors to this marketing association, where 100% of the monies collected go towards marketing in one form or another. The participating members donate all work effort put into the group, so there is no additional cost to the budget for us to operate.
The methods used to offer our publications and advice are as follows:
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Web site - (www.ductile.org/dimg)
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Advertising in national metals publications
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Mailing publications to satisfy ad inquiries
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Exhibiting at Design and Engineering shows
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Responding to questions relating to ductile iron castings and properties by telephone, e-mail, and fax
There are four publications, which are also available as downloadable files on our web site:
* Ductile Iron Data book, >200 pages of information about the various types of ductile iron castings, properties, specifications, ordering and applications.
* A Design Engineers Digest of Ductile Iron, an introduction to ductile iron, 40 pages.
* Why Convert to Ductile Iron, 2 pages (card form).
* Designs in Ductile Iron, cost saving conversions to ductile iron, 27 pages.
The first three listed publications are printed and donated free of charge to the marketing group by Rio Tinto Iron & Titanium and all of the publications are current as of the year 2000.
The website has been extremely popular as a marketing tool for us and has been noted as being very helpful to those who use it to locate information. It has shown increasing traffic that is now over four thousand unique visitors per month from all over the world. The most viewed pages have been from the Ductile Iron data Book. The web site contains e-mail addresses, which are used often by casting users to ask questions and obtain information.
The group spends most of its contributed money on direct advertising and press releases of our publications. To this end we have used the following publications:
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New Equipment Digest
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Industrial Product Bulletin
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Product Design & Development
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Literature for Industry
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Machine Design
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Design News
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Industrial Equipment News
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Design Fax
We have received over 1500 inquiries for information and/or publications during our 2000/2001 fiscal year. Additionally this past year we have advertised and are giving away an SAE paper that was published by one of our member companies using data generated by one of the Ductile Iron Society's research projects. This paper gives cyclic fatigue property data that can be readily used in computer aided product design. This data has been lacking and the society has been pushing to get it out on the market.
We also have direct contact with potential ductile iron casting users through exhibiting at design and engineering shows such as SAE Show, National Design & Engineering Show, and Primary Metals Show, where we give out publications and answer questions concerning the use of ductile iron.
The Ductile Iron Society maintains our web site and mails out all printed publications that are requested through the website or through our advertising.
Increasing the size of the Ductile Iron Market benefits all members of the society. In turn all members should promote the efforts of the group, use the publications in their own market programs and refer customers and potential customers to the website for information. Volunteers are also always needed to man the booth at shows. All DIS members should look at the website frequently and get involved with the marketing of ductile iron.
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