SPE Injection Molding Division
It’s an honor to be serving as your Chair this year. Thank you for the trust.
I’m especially looking forward to the Innovation Summit on October 22 in Cleveland, in Warrensville Heights, to be exact, at the Corporate College Conference Center. It’s shaping up to be a strong one. Lynzie Nebel, SPE’s Chair, is keynoting, and we’ve got a great group of sponsors and exhibitors coming out to support it, including Avient, Chase Plastics, Moldex3D, Milacron, Sodick, and Cleveland State University, among others. The agenda’s going to dig into some timely stuff too: AI in injection molding, workforce training, sustainability, and where the economy’s headed for our industry. If you’ve never been to one of these regional summits, this is a good year to start. And of course, NPE is on the calendar too. Hope to see a lot of you there as well.
Speaking of new faces: we’ve brought on several new Board members this term, and their energy has already been a great addition. It’s good to see people show up ready to contribute.
We’re also doing some real thinking about how the Board operates. Between the aging workforce and the economic uncertainty everyone’s dealing with right now, it felt like the right time to ask harder questions about how we support our members going forward. More to come on that.
A bit about where I’m coming from on this: I’m faculty, so I’m talking with industry folks, other academics, and students pretty much constantly. It gives me a good read on where things stand across the board. I also just wrapped up a year long sabbatical in industry, working in injection molding for medical devices, which was honestly one of the more useful years I’ve had for understanding where our field is headed.
If you’ve got thoughts, ideas, concerns, reach out. I mean that. And thank you to our Board for the work they put in; it doesn’t go unnoticed.
Looking forward to the year ahead.
Tom Giovannetti
Chair, SPE Injection Molding Division
