Committee Connection

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SMI Holds April Zoom Board Meeting

SMI 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

that the participants want, based on the survey portion of the evaluations.

The 301 fatigue training is being put together now, led by Jason Sicotte from Associated Spring and Al Mangels from Lee Spring, which meets weekly and it will be a fairly substantial program. Rick Gordon added that the existing fatigue data was dated and didn’t reflect the latest in steelmaking technology. New data was put together by Goering, Sicotte and Dan Sebastian.

The 304 dimensioning, tolerancing and testing class is tailored after the Testing and Tolerancing book in the “Encyclopedia of Spring Design,” and is scheduled to be held in the summer. The team is looking for extension spring participants.

Regulatory Compliance

Committee chair Joe Devany of Betts Company said SMI is hosting four webinars this year. He noted that there has been no nonmember participation and the committee is looking for ways to drive that. Among SMI members, there are 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.

multiple participants from each company. A lot of OSHA and COVID information has been emailed to members from Laura Helmrich Rhodes, as well as posted on the website. Rhodes would like to have members add new ideas for webinars.

Rhodes also noted that she has had virtual conversations and emails with many members in lieu of in-person visits. Some companies are planning on-site audits and training classes this summer.

Rhodes said the committee wants to create a group of “safety champions” from member companies to gather for information and training, and to help create webinar topics.

Membership

Membership chair Dave Deerwester said SMI currently has 280 members, which includes 202 regular and 78 associate members. He noted that membership is down about 5 percent, but there are a few unpaid memberships and some of those companies have committed to sending their payment.

Next Meeting

The next SMI board meeting is scheduled for Sept. 27, 2021 just before the start of the SMI Metal Engineering eXpo in Las Vegas. n

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