Committee Connection

SMI Board Meets in the Bahamas

SMI president Steve Kempf of Lee Spring presided over his last meeting of the association’s board of directors when the group met March 8 at the Atlantis, Bahamas. Kempf welcomed the newest member of the board, Jennelle Carlier of S3 Wireform.

Kempf noted that the committee meetings were well attended earlier in the day. This was reflective of the fact that they were being held a day later than usual, on Sunday.

Here are some of the highlights from the meeting.

Workforce Development

SMI will continue to be a part of the Dream It. Do It. program and to support the annual Manufacturing Day event in October. The association wants to produce a video to be used in schools to promote springmaking and the spring industry. There is also a plan to have workforce development regional chairs who would meet periodically by conference call. The regional chairs would represent companies in their region, who are using their local contacts and resources to promote manufacturing.

Technical Offerings/Services

The 100 series “fundamental” videos on spring design are available for free on the SMI website. The 201 spring design class has been taught several times in person; SMI is promoting the availability of private classes, in which companies can have SMI come to their facility to teach the course to their employees. There is also an option of making the class a combined class for designing compression and extension springs that would stretch over a day and a half. SMI is working to make its budget for technical services closer to break-even. It was announced that the price for SMI’s ASD software will increase for the first time in 12 years.

Metal Engineering eXpo

Plans are moving forward toward the 2021 SMI Metal Engineering eXpo at the Southpoint Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. SMI will also host the international TC227 meeting at the hotel. It was noted that SMI associate members are pushing toward combining the eXpo with CASMI’s SpringWorld. They want to pursue a “one show” idea with CASMI, while making sure that that CASMI doesn’t lose money and keeps their programs funded.

There have also been conversations with doing some kind of collaboration with the Wire Association International and PMA. In addition, the International Fastener Show is traditionally held in Las Vegas near the same time as the eXpo. It was suggested that SMI might

team up with the Fastener Show to have a reciprocal agreement so attendees could attend either show.

Associates

The associates committee also suggested that SMI institute a suitcasing policy. If an associate member would be able to exhibit at the eXpo and chooses not to, they would not be allowed to attend the eXpo. In addition, non-exhibitors would not be permitted to have an outside event within 24 hours of the event. The associates committee also requested that SMI pursue a best practices policy written by an attorney, as insurance against sexual harassment and other issues.

Convention Planning

The 2021 SMI Annual Meeting will be held at the Hyatt Regency in Scottsdale. For future meetings, the committee suggested looking at more budgetconscious resorts to attract more attendees. They also suggested looking at offering discounted registration fees

based on how many people attend from each company. Site considerations for 2022 include the Gulf Shore region, Florida or New Orleans.

Membership

It was suggested that membership value could be reinforced with an article in the magazine on “Why SMI?” This could include testimonials from members as to why they joined. There was also a suggestion that SMI ramp up its social media feeds with continuous news on what’s happening with SMI. This would be especially useful during the annual meeting to provide information to those members who are unable to attend. Relevant magazine articles from Springs could also be shared on LinkedIn.

Regulatory Compliance

Laura Helmrich-Rhodes conducted four webinars in 2019 that were well attended. The PowerPoint presentations from those webinars are available at the SMI website on “Effective Safety Committees,” “Workers’ Compensation Cost Controls,” “How to Handle an OSHA Inspection,” and “Accident Investigations.” Four webinars are planned for 2020. “Basic Ergonomic Assessments: Eliminating Inefficiencies and Stressors,” was scheduled for May 18 and “Job Safety Analysis: How to & Their Many Uses” was scheduled for June 15. For the remainder of 2020, “Basic Safety Recordkeeping” is planned for July 13 and “Basic Lock Out/Tag Out Compliance” on Sept. 25. Helmrich-Rhodes also noted that 31 companies were recently fined more than $500,000 and the most frequent citation was lockout/tagout.

Technical

A safety roundtable group among SMI members might be a valuable addition to Helmrich-Rhodes’ webinar to garner more involvement. The committee continues to meet on a regular basis to build the training program of 14 courses on spring design (fundamental, basic and advanced). The 201 class has been taught two times already and the group is considering feedback from the students to make changes to help improve the course. Most of the feed back from the compression spring (201 class) was that the next class should be extension and torsion springs. Future courses would involve spring washer, torsion and snap ring design. The committee indicated they would change the priority on some of the courses based on what people want, and to start presenting some of the advanced classes.

SMI’s board of directors is currently scheduled to meet just before SpringWorld in October. n

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