Society of Manufacturing Engineers

North Texas Chapter 51

Texarkoma Region 11

My trip to Dearborn, Michigan for SME’s 2000 Annual Meeting & Manufacturing Leadership Forum was action packed. Between the Resource Open House at the Hotel on Thursday afternoon and the tour of SME HQ on Friday morning, I really got a sense of the many activities SME is involved in: Publications, Expositions, Educational Grants and Scholarships, Public Relations, K-12 Programs, Membership Services, and Certification. The support of these activities keeps the 300+ employees at SME HQ busy.

During Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, I attended four workshops aimed at training Chapter Leaders like myself to generate excitement amongst our members and community to build a better SME chapter. The workshops included "Chapter Imaging-Making: Promoting SME in the Business Community & Beyond", "Planning Inclusive & Diverse Programming", "Revisiting the Retention Toolkit" and "Officer Training".

At two group luncheons, two new products were introduced, geared towards better serving the SME members. They were the Career Mentor: an interactive software tool to help guide the manufacturing engineer along a successful career path, and the Personal Productivity Toolkit: a CD-ROM full of valuable information resources from SME publications to be updated annually. These two new exciting products are in the final stages of completion, and SME members will be hearing more about them soon.

Saturday afternoon, an interactive Joint Session was held with all SME leaders (Executive, Region and Chapter levels) and was lead by SME’s 2000 President Ron Harrelson, CMfgE. Through various exercises, our SME leaders were able to provide feedback on proposed directions and priorities for SME. A high priority for the future was for SME NOT to stand for "Some Mail Everyday".

Finally, Saturday night, we were treated to a formal reception and banquet honoring the International Honor Award winners. Of particular note for SME members, who have children or grandchildren who are considering pursuing university studies in manufacturing engineering, is the $80K scholarship ($20K/year for 4 years). Contact SME HQ for more info.

As you can see, I had busy trip and look forward to talking with each one of you personally about how you can get more involved with the chapter activities. Thereby, helping the chapter and you grow. Win! Win!

Peter Tanguy, Chair-Elect - 2000, North Texas Chapter 51