Dear Members of the Injection Molding Division (IMD),
It’s an honor to have the opportunity to lead the SPE Injection-Molding Division during this new term, and I want to first express my gratitude to our prior Chairman, Jeremy Dworshak, and the entire IMD Board of Directors. Under Jeremy’s leadership we have set a new direction to focus on creating new benefits and programs for our division members including closer collaboration with the SPE National organization.
In my first Chairman’s letter, I want to highlight some of the plans for the new term, which I feel build nicely on the efforts of the recent past. I will name these the “four pillars” of focus for IMD in 2024 and 2025:
Collaborative Content Partnerships
With the excellent personal and professional networks provided through the SPE and many of our prominent members, we have the opportunity to create and strengthen partnerships with industry, educational institutions, intra-SPE divisions and sections, and external like-minded cross-disciplinary organizations. In this manner we will be able to obtain a higher quality of programming in a shorter period of time, than if we try to build content programs from scratch.
We are already in contact with several companies for industry visits, and with universities which are willing to host board meetings and open their facilities to the SPE community for specially arranged tours and lectures. Two events which I want to immediately highlight are the 25th International Polymer Colloquium hosted at the University of Madison-Wisconsin in March, and the Innovation and Emerging Plastic Technologies Conference hosted at Penn State Behrend in June. Both are being led by IMD board members, and are open to our SPE membership and the plastics community.
Additionally, we are reaching out to other SPE divisions and sections for potential joint events and forums, and we want to make collaborative inroads with aligned external organizations such as the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and the World Design Organization (WDO). Product developers require materials to make their innovations come to life so there is an opportunity for the IMD to expand our reach through those organizations.
Project Focused Committees
The long standing mission of the IMD has been to “promote the scientific and engineering knowledge of injection molding.” There is work to be done to enable this objective, to build strategies which can be developed and implemented through the formation of targeted IMD committees.
Some of the most relevant committee projects would be to build and improve publications to expand member and public access to information, continue workshops (our first Workshop for the National Week of Injection Molding will take place on Sept 24-25, 2024), and improve communications outreach (including optimizing our website, newsletter, and social media).
Expertise with Higher Visibility
To build greater excitement and participation we also want to significantly increase our division’s visibility, both to members within the SPE as well as externally. To this end, it will be important for us to focus on creating activity to happen where people already will be, instead of expecting them to travel to one of our stand-alone events.
One venue which is always well attended is the ANTEC, and we plan to work with the SPE National team to restart our IMD reception, which had been very well attended in the past. In addition, we are in discussion with the national office to launch an injection-molded plastics part competition, with the winning entries to be showcased at the 2025 ANTEC in Philadelphia. The competition will be judged by a panel of notable industry experts, with the results to be featured in a future Plastics Engineering issue, as well as other industry publications. There is also an idea about converting the showcase of winning parts into a traveling exhibition to facilitate further visibility for the winners, our division, and the SPE at large.
Future Proofing
The life blood of any organization is its members. I cannot emphasize enough that we must give full attention to continue building a foundation for the IMD that will continue to provide leadership into the future. This means increasing our division membership by inviting more professionals to join the SPE-IMD; also by inviting younger industry professionals to participate and join the leadership of our IMD board. This is an open invitation to anyone who would like to get involved; we welcome participation at every level of interest!
In mentoring younger industry professionals, I feel we should try to also improve our supporting activities to bring new sponsors and work to offer more scholarships and internships. And we should promote sustainability as it relates to our industry. We witness everyday how plastics has the power to transform communities and we should always keep in mind our need to highlight the benefits of plastics and responsible use in raising the quality of life around the world. To avoid misconceptions about our industry, we will need to strive to champion leadership as a key pathway towards a better future in everything we do.
David Kusuma, Ph.D.
Chair, SPE Injection Molding Divisio
