You’ve seen Strongwell products all around you, though you may not have recognized them. When you pick up a fiberglass-handled shovel at the hardware store, you’re probably picking up a Strongwell product. Strongwell makes the fiberglass handrails at Disneyland, ladder rails for fiberglass ladders, and carbon-fiber coated drive shafts for GM trucks. Red Roof Inns use Strongwell’s fiberglass railings, stair landings, and canopy supports to replace the original, now corroded, steel structures. The Chicago Transit Authority installed Strongwell fiberglass gratings and walkways when the old wooden structures became too slippery and warped for their workers’ safety.

Strongwell is a $100 million, privately-owned business headquartered in Bristol, Virginia, with additional operations in Ohio, Tennessee, Minnesota, and California. The 1000+ employees are spread throughout five plants in these five states. At corporate headquarters in Bristol, Strongwell’s main plant houses more than 40 pultrusion machines, plus a modern testing and development laboratory, in nearly 400,000 square feet, making it the largest pultrusion plant in the world. Pultrusion is a continuous molding process involving plastic resin and fiber reinforcements -- usually glass or carbon. The reinforcements are pulled through the resin and a heated die to form
structural composite shapes such as I-beams or 
other linear shapes.

Strongwell supplies a number of standard products,
but it also does plenty of custom work in fiberglass,
reinforced plastics, and pultruded materials.

The Strongwell plants produce a variety of products -- one division designs and manufactures the pultrusion machinery needed by the other plants, as well as selling such machinery to other manufacturers. The Quazite Division is the only division not devoted to pultrusion--it manufactures precast polymer concrete products for utility, industrial, and highway use.

John Tickle, President of Strongwell since 1972, has led the company to its current strong position in the pultrusion industry. He sees Strongwell’s expansion onto the Internet and World Wide Web as a logical step in the company’s growth. "Strongwell is a leader in its field, and we take pride in our professional image. Designers and engineers are always looking for new methods and new materials, and reinforced plastics can provide the capabilities needed in many industries," says Tickle. "Anywhere you have corrosion problems, and any place you need a strong, nonconductive material, Strongwell has a solution."

Strongwell has big plans. The market for reinforced plastics is growing, and Strongwell’s international operations are also expanding. More plants and more business require better communication within the company and with customers and suppliers. "We felt that the time is right for us to get online," Tickle says.

The computing environment at Strongwell is typical of many medium-to-large businesses -- it has some computer-savvy individuals, a small internal network with internal electronic mail, and several computer systems. Strongwell has four DEC VAX computer systems to run and develop custom coded administrative programs and to act as print and file servers for a network of PC’s, printers, and scanners. Personnel at the Bristol headquarters could send email internally, but not outside the company nor to the other plants. In other words, Strongwell is a successful business using today’s technology, but John Tickle knew his company needed to take that next step into the future, and he wanted to be sure it was done right.

Strongwell manufactures pultruded fiberglass grids and grating in a range of options such as open space, bar shape, cross-rod placement, custom resins, colors, bar spacings and profiles, and various grit particle densities and sizes.

That’s where Intergraph came into the picture. Working with Strongwell, we designed a system that included an Internet connection, email, a public web server, and a firewall to protect the company’s resources. Basically, Intergraph provided the hardware, software, and service bundle that allowed Strongwell to get online in a matter of days.

The InterServe Web-300 was chosen, since it was to handle SMTP email and DNS, as well as function as the Web Server. An InterServe Firewall-300 was selected for protection. Strongwell also purchased the Internet Access and Web Server Startup services. The Access service provides the hardware, software, and service to link a company to the Internet. The Web Server Startup package includes software and consulting to create and manage a website.

In April, a small team of Intergraph Network Services personnel arrived at Strongwell to put them online. Strongwell’s marketing staff had already designed a prototype home page. "We want to create an awareness of our products among the technical community, and we knew this was the way to do it," says Tickle. In addition to marketing information for customers and potential customers, Strongwell eventually plans to provide catalogs and ordering information. "Some of our customers and suppliers are already asking to conduct business over the Internet," Tickle says.

The first day the Intergraph team met with Strongwell officials to discuss how and where the various components of the services would take place. After a high-level overview of the Internet and the World Wide Web, they split into two groups. One focused on the technical aspects of the system, while the other set to work on creating a website.

By the time the firewall, webserver, and email were operational, many more people at Strongwell knew about the Internet and the networking potentials for their company. "Since Intergraph came in and set us up with the Internet server and email, there’s been a lot more interest in creating an Intranet," says Jimmy Orton, system manager for Strongwell. "I think the Internet server will change a lot for us -- the whole company is really taking off on this."