Committee Connection

SMI Holds Historic Zoom Board Meeting

Declaring himself the “pandemic president,” SMI president Bert Goering of Precision Coil Spring presided over the association’s first board of directors meeting held via Zoom on Sept. 23, 2020.

“SMI has done a good job of being agile to adapt to this new world,” commented Goering about the current pandemic. “SMI has adapted to this ‘new normal’ financially with the conventions, doing webinars instead of in-person training classes and Zoom committee meetings.”

Goering started the meeting by acknowledging the new board members who had come on board since the annual meeting in March. The group included Jennelle Carlier, S3 Wireform; Don Lyons, JonSpring; Alex Melnikow, Midstate Spring; and Keith Porter Jr., Newcomb Spring.

“Don’t just be silent, we encourage participation and debate,” advised Goering.

It was noted by Goering that SMI has taken a slight financial hit due to the pandemic, “but nothing too surprising considering the environment we are in right now.” He commended SMI executive director Lynne Carr for doing a stellar job controlling SMI’s expenses.

Goering also noted that SMI is down seven regular members and four associate members. “Hopefully, they are temporary losses as people are navigating COVID,” said Goering.

He also noted that regulatory compliance visits are off due to COVID, and that failure analysis is down by half.

On a brighter note, Goering said the technical committee has done a great job pivoting to online webinars to deliver the spring design training curriculum. He commended the work of SMI’s two

SMI president Bert Goering at his office in California, where he presided over the association's first ever virtual board meeting.

technical experts, Rick Gordon and Gary Van Buren, for making this possible.

2021 Metal Engineering eXpo

The 2021 SMI Metal Engineering eXpo is moving forward as planned for Sept. 28-30, at the South Point Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. An overture was made to CASMI to bring the two shows together, but no agreement was worked out. Goering said SMI has asked its associate members to be the bridge and initiate a proposal. (Editor’s note: The trade show committee has met twice since the board meeting to work on planning for the event.)

It was noted that, due to input from the technical committee, there are an abundance of technical speakers available to fill out the “Manufacturing, Technology and Innovation” and the “Materials and Testing” tracks. More speakers are needed to fill out the “Business Trends and Best Practices” track. The highest need is for good business speakers, and suggestions are welcomed from the committee’s network of contacts.

Springs Magazine

The magazine committee held a conference call in September to choose 2021 issue themes: Winter – “Social Media and the Spring Industry;” Spring –“Advances in Springmaking;” Summer – “Springmaking Businesses Come in All Sizes;” and Fall – “SMI Metal Engineering eXpo 2021 – Las Vegas.” (Editor’s note: Shortly after the board meeting, a new magazine chair was selected to replace David DeVoe of Plymouth Spring, who joined the SMI executive committee in March 2020. Keith Porter Jr. of Newcomb Spring is the new committee chair.)

Regulatory Compliance

With in-person site visits on the decline due to COVID-19, Laura HelmrichRhodes has fielded numerous emails and phone calls from SMI members. She’s also been holding regular safety webinars, which are posted to the SMI website for members immediately after they are held. Regulatory compliance committee chair Joe Devany of Betts Company said the committee is considering hosting a regular Zoom “safety hour,” where members can ask questions and bring up issues. Devany and Rhodes hope this may drive some interest in committee participation.

Rhodes will soon release her “Top Ten OSHA Citations” list and noted that top citations have remained consistent. She said many complaints related to COVID19 have kept OSHA busy.

Benchmarking

It was noted that the Annual Market Survey had 41 participants in 2020, compared to 51 in 2019. The Wage and Benefit Survey was distributed to SMI members in Sept. 2020.

Technical Committee

The committee continues to be busy working with Gordon and Van Buren on the 14 spring design courses. The three courses that have been completed were originally going to be taught in person, both separately and during SpringWorld 2020. But with the cancellation of the event and inability to hold in-person events, the classes were presented virtually in August (compression springs), September (torsion springs) and October (extension springs). More are planned for 2021.

It was noted by committee chair Tim Zwit that Todd Piefer of UTS (developers of SMI ASD software) has receive many questions related to ASD and fatigue life. The committee has identified issues that could result in calculations, which have not been updated for many years despite changes in materials and processing. A group has been formed within the committee to evaluate fatigue life.

ISO/TC 227

The last committee meeting was held virtually in Sept. 2020 and Gordon reported that participants included several SMI members, including Tom Armstrong of Duer/Carolina Coil and Al Mangels of Lee Spring. “As always, we had reps from many countries and we were able to come to a consensus because of our working relationships from previous meetings,” said Gordon. The next meeting for the committee is scheduled for Sept. 30 to Oct. 1 in Las Vegas, immediately following the SMI Metal Engineering eXpo.

The next SMI board meeting is scheduled for April 2021. n

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