IIDM Behind the Scenes

This year's Chili Cook-Off marked the 8th year of celebrating Independence Day with our Chilicheesemustardoniondogmania event. The Dallas CIA group sponsored the annual event, which was another success. Eight contestants entered and the reigning champ hopeful at taking first place of favorite chili. What kind of chili recipes were in the running? There were spicy, veggie, and returning chili batches. All chili welcome here and loved having more entries mixing up the competition! Congratulations to the top three chili cooks!

1st place- Jesse Simental

2nd place- Dan Mangan

3rd place- Britt Welch

A shout out to all the contestants sharing chili and making it a better event than before! We can't wait to see what's in store for next year!

It started as a hallway conversation. Our own Preston Ross was talking about how he ran the 400 meter event at Crowley High School. Claimed he ran a sub-one minute time. Todd Mueller said he could get three other guys from work and beat him in a relay vs. solo 400 meter challenge.

So it became that a team (Mueller, Jesse Simental, Rob Phillimore and Omar Mediano) with combined years closer to 150 raced against a single person closer to 25. What happened? Watch the video. Winning time was about 1.15. BTW, the world records for the 400 meter and the 4x100 are 43.03 and 36.84 respectively.

Innovative-IDM Maypole

Today at our morning hoopla meeting (left), we danced around the IIDM Maypole to celebrate several things.

1. the end of April
2. May Day
3. Our customers
4. the fact that May Day and Mayday have very different meanings.

Now if you believe all of that malarky, consider this: We really do have a customer focus meeting EVERY morning at 8:15 a.m. There have been guest appearances by cow tippers, soothsayers, El Pollo Loco, beanie wienie, rabid Easter bunnies, recipes and lots and lots of motivational techniques.

Customers ARE our focus, and we remind ourselves every morning. Visit us at www.InnovativeIDM.com or call 1.877.906.2100.

It was a beautiful day in the summer of 2006 when our panel shop completed a panel that needed to be hand delivered to a customer that same day. We needed a truck so Tim Mueller, one of IIDM's owners, volunteered his bright red F150.

The truck was in pristine condition. Tim had to attend a sales meeting so I offered to deliver the panel to the customer. Jason Scott jumped on the forklift to meet me at the dock while I pulled Tim’s truck to the back of the building. Do you see where I am going with this?

We had a ramp for vehicles to drive up to the dock for loading purposes. When I pulled to the back of the building, I saw a co-worker sitting on a forklift on the dock. I didn’t think he would move. He did. And so did I. I start backing up the ramp. Please keep in mind I am NOT looking in the rear view mirror. I am only looking at both side mirrors while assuming Jason was still at the dock.

The next thing I know I just hit a brick wall. My first reaction was what did I hit? Did I hit the building? No, it was the forklift. I didn’t realize my colleague was coming down the ramp while I was backing up the ramp. When I was looking in the side mirrors I did not see him. I felt horrible that I just bashed Tim’s shiny truck. Luckily, it was only the bumper. Jason, my colleague, felt bad as well.

I went ahead and left to take the panel to the customer while Jason broke the news to Tim. Tim took the bad news in stride and still laughs about it today. Ol' Red continued to service the Mueller family for another decade.

But, one thing I will say; I will not let a forklift or anything stop me from delivering product to a customer.

— Mark Stanley