©iStockphoto.com/Studio-Pro
Committee Connection SMI Holds April Zoom Board Meeting
S
MI president Bert Goering of Precision Coil Spring presided over the association’s second board of directors meeting held via Zoom April 22, 2021.
New 401(k) Program Goering welcomed Liz Hickox of Core Financial Partners, who will administer a new 401(k) program for SMI members. “She is very dedicated to making this happen and wants to travel the country to make individual presentations to SMI members,” said Goering. In addition, Hickox will be at the SMI Metal Engineering eXpo in Las Vegas to meet with members. Hickox has worked with former SMI president Scott Rankin for the past eight years on a plan for employees of Vulcan Spring. Hickox said the new plan is “a pooled employer plan, which allows multiple employers from unrelated businesses to pool together to better leverage the benefits of pricing and support, outsourcing risk and responsibility.” Hickox has worked with Goering and SMI executive director Lynne Carr to iron out details of the program. Hickox and her team reviewed the plans of nine different SMI board members to determine that this pooled plan would substantially save costs and time for their companies. Why is SMI doing this? “There is an enormous amount of risk in sponsoring a plan for your employees,” said Hickox. “Unless you have outsourced all of the plan’s responsibilities to a named third party, you are still on the hook for personal liability.” The provider of the program is Empower Retirement, a large market provider that caters to plans of $50 million and up.
The new 401(k) program for SMI members is “a pooled employer plan which allows multiple employers from unrelated businesses to pool together to better leverage the benefits of pricing and support, outsourcing risk and responsibility.” The program was scheduled to launch in mid-May 2021. There is a small revenue sharing benefit for SMI.
Bylaw Change The SMI board unanimously voted to accept a bylaw change that extends the service term for a board member from two to three years. This gives board members more time to engage and make improvements to their committees. Finance Committee SMI secretary/treasurer Don Jacobson III of Newcomb Spring reported that SMI, under Lynne Carr’s leadership, has worked hard to reduce costs as much as possible during the pandemic. He noted that a new source of revenue has come to SMI with the movement of the spring design training classes to an online format. The revenue from the training classes is expected to continue to be strong through the end of 2021. Jacobson also said that due to the postponement of the 2021 SMI annual meeting in Arizona due to COVID, SMI will not suffer the financial loss that normally takes place. He also noted that very few companies did not pay their association dues, and that ASD revenue continues to be strong. Technical Committee Dr. Edwin Odom, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Idaho,
has created a formula related to torsion spring values. He asked Todd Piefer from UTS if it could be validated and incorporated into SMI’s Advanced Spring Design (ASD) software. Goering put it out to the board to try to find a company that manufactures a lot of torsion springs to test the formula. Tim Zwit, chairman of the technical committee, also noted that more volunteers are needed for the committee due to the numerous projects that are taking place. The committee wants to compile a database of technical articles that have been printed in Springs, and have them added to the website to be easily accessible. The committee said there is a great demand for technical knowledge and they will assist SMI in putting these into different categories.
Spring Design Classes Zwit noted that 14 different classes/webinars have been formulated. The 202 class was scheduled for May and the 201 class in June. Two of the advanced 300 level classes will soon be presented for the first time later this year. Since the spring design classes started in 2019, 10 classes have been presented representing almost 300 participants. Evaluations have been strong, with an average of 4.3 out of 5 that “strongly agree” the information is valuable. The committee is developing the programs
SPRINGS / Spring 2021 / 67
