Society presidents typically serve one-year terms, placing unique pressure on them to provide for long-term leadership stability.
Automation World: What is the biggest challenge facing the Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) today?
Geary: SME must strive to be more efficient as a business so that it can continue to provide relevant and value-added materials and information to our members and customers.
AW: What are some of the hurdles SME faces in delivering these benefits?
Geary: Well, not unlike other professional societies, we are facing shrinking markets and more demanding customers. We have to become more efficient so that we can deliver products at a cost that allows making a little profit. We’ve been a little slow to turn things around. It has taken several years to get some people to realize that we can’t operate at a loss. My desire is to get us on a path where it’s not acceptable to the leadership for SME to spend more money than we take in. I hope to have a plan in place that returns us to profitability by late 2007 or early 2008—something not seen since the late 1990s.
AW: What do you intend to do during your year as president to accomplish this task?
Geary: I need to articulate this vision of an efficiently run organization devoted to servicing its members. I need to get everyone to buy into the vision and understand what we need to do. Rather than develop some big strategy, I just want to reinforce the great things SME has done and drive velocity on the things we need to do—that is, become an efficient and profitable organization.
AW: Your term as president runs only through December. Isn’t it a challenge for your type of organization, where the president changes every year?
Geary: You’re right. Organizations have allowed the elected leaders from year to year to come in and change things. There is no continuity. So, I’m trying to get all the officers on board with the long-range strategy so that we can attain and maintain velocity in the quest for profitability.
AW: Could you describe the areas of manufacturing and technologies that you serve?
Geary: The markets we’re most relevant for are aerospace, defense and transportation. We are also doing more in the medical market—and not just devices there, but looking at how the design process works and whether technologies such as nanotechnology and “rapid” (involving rapid product modeling) can help all aspects of the medical industry, including pharmaceuticals, produce faster.
Now, saying that we are developing programs, trade shows and conferences in new areas such as nanotechnology doesn’t say that we are moving away from our traditional base in metal removal machines. But we are looking at ways where we can leverage traditional knowledge but also look at what today’s practitioner needs in a new way.
AW: I’m interviewing you while you are in Indianapolis at the Performance Manufac-turing Summit. This is an SME conference concentrating on auto racing. How does this fit the new mold?
Geary: The goal of this conference is to help manufacturers that produce high-performance products like engines and other components of auto racing vehicles. We’re taking the same tools and offerings that we already have and leveraging into the high-performance market. And what we learn from doing this conference will help us grow within the whole transportation industry.
Famous race driver Bennie Parsons gave the keynote for this conference. He talked about how race teams, back when he started, had a few tools and one engine in the shop. Now, there are companies with advanced machining capability who build engines for more than one car so that they can gain the advantages of scale. Think about what they’ve done with the engines they have built. Motor sports teams are starting to use modern technologies and we can provide a forum to enhance their learning.
AW: SME is taking a leading role teaching Lean Manufacturing (see Automation World, November 2005, p. 34). How is the work proceeding for Lean Certification?
Geary: SME is collaborating with the Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME) and the Shingo Prize to provide an industry-leading standard for practitioners of Lean. We did a “soft” launch already, but the big unveiling will be at our Westec conference in Los Angeles in March. There is a lot going on out there with the annual gala awards dinner, a manufacturing summit and a nanotech summit, but Lean will be prominent.
SME’s part of the collaboration is to contain the body of knowledge, provide examinations and assure that it meets with what the industry expects. Then we’ll collaborate with the others on training. There are three levels of certification, but throughout, candidates will have to show more than just textbook competency. They will also have to show competence in experience with a portfolio of successes. The process is similar to the proven Technologist and Engineering certifications that we’ve had for years. We’ll also be providing textbooks and other learning materials on Lean thinking to teach Lean as a tool that makes companies more efficient.
We’re also trying to utilize Lean thinking within our own organization. We’re training the staff to think Lean in whatever they do.
AW: Are there any other initiatives underway?
Geary: We are pushing hard in the Rapid Technologies and Additive Manufacturing (RTAM) area. Rapid prototyping, an older part of the process, is a process of taking a product designed in a computer and quickly making a prototype pattern or tooling. RTAM processes apply gradient and organic materials on the nano to macro scale for rapid product modeling, helping companies conceive, develop, test, improve and manufacture new products, bringing them to market faster and more cost-effectively. We think there’s room to advance and share knowledge in those areas.
AW: Let’s turn to the value of SME to its members. What can a typical member get from an SME membership?
Geary: We’ve always strived to provide value-added information so that our members can be more competitive in the workplace. In addition, there is a networking component. Members gather in chapter meetings, conferences and other society venues to talk about things of mutual interest and share views of industry trends. We’re a member society, so our first goal is to advance the knowledge of our members. But we are faced with the same challenge as other technical societies of discovering how to make sure we’re developing the right products and getting them out to the members in a timely fashion. For example, using computers was the hot topic in the 1990s. Now it’s Lean. We have to stay on top of the next hot technology to help our members compete on a global basis.
AW: That sounds like quite a challenge.
Geary: SME is a pretty interesting business in terms of all the internal businesses we have that provide revenue that helps provide services to members. It’s interesting that we must compete against “for-profit” companies and do well against them, even though we are a member-based organization. I think we’re pretty unique in how we do all this. But we’re steeped in many years of tradition, and it’s time to move away from some of the traditional things we do and move to some new things. This will be hard, but essential.
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