Hello, Division membership, fellow SPE colleagues, and plastic part designers!
It is the end of summer, and I hope you all were able to take some time and enjoy the nicer weather and make some memories. I enjoyed time mountain biking, hiking, and spending time with my kids while they were out of school. I have also enjoyed a few meetings with our Product Design and Development Division (PD3) Board in preparation for creating an exciting year for our members. I am honored to have been selected by our Board to serve as the next Chair and help us continue to reach and engage the design community in moving plastic part design forward. While plastics have received significant negative publicity from both the general public and from several governmental agencies, likely the audience reading this message realizes the immense benefits and potential plastics still hold in helping us achieve our sustainability goals. Additionally, although all SPE members are passionate about plastic materials, PD3 is the one that is most likely to help shift those opinions as we integrate plastics responsibly into our designs and assemblies.
As a Board, we have a great team of engineers and designers with a wide array of design experience. With the goal of educating the design community, we have several new ways we are looking to educate both PD3 and non-SPE members. The first big step was to update our website, https://pd3.4spe.org/, to a modern version that acts as a central source for designers to find design tips and guides for different materials and different industries. It will also be a central source for contemporary design news stories that will inspire and educate. We will continue to update the webpage to keep it fresh and relevant. The second step we are taking this year is to create a free webinar series called “Design For…”. This will be a bi-monthly webinar series on different design topics that will allow our audience to both learn and network with others in the design community. These webinars will be open to anyone in the design community (both SPE and non-SPE members) and will include both a technical presentation and a social activity over a one-hour period! Our first speaker, Vik Bhargava, is a PD3 Board member and plastics engineer who brings a wealth of knowledge about all aspects of plastic part design. He will be talking about how designers can better identify the root cause of plastic part performance issues and properly find solutions. Look for more information on that via our webpage or through LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/spe-pd3/)! The third and final major initiative we are undertaking as a Board is to more regularly engage our product design community through the consistent release of a newsletter. The newsletter will contain contemporary design articles and educational events! If you are interested in submitting any content, please feel free to reach out to us via our website and we will help you get your content ready for release. We will also look to keep an up-to-date design calendar of educational and networking events.
I’m excited about these three large initiatives that the Board has selected to push forward. As I stated before, we have a great team that is eager and willing to put these large projects together. While I am impressed with everyone we have on our Board, I do want to conclude this first message with a shout-out to our past chair, Albert McGovern. Al was an active member of PD3 while he was working as Director of Mechanical Engineering at Shure Incorporated. However, since he retired in July, 2021, he has become even more active on the Board and has spearheaded the creation of our website and helped arrange many of our technical events over the last several years. Without all his efforts to get the Board moving in a focused direction, none of the three activities highlighted above would have been possible. I sincerely thank him for all his efforts in creating a platform where we can be successful!
Of course, this will be a journey, so if you are interested in joining us to actively move our initiatives forward or have ideas on how we can better serve our PD3 membership, please reach out to us. We have a team that is eager and capable of making it a reality!
I look forward to connecting with you over the next year!
Erik Foltz
Chair, PD3