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One of the challenging aspects of additive manufacturing technology adoption is how to conceptualize and create part designs that are optimized for function and manufacturability.

Assisting Small and Medium-Sized Manufacturers with Industry 4.0/Smart Manufacturing Technology Adoption

It is a great honor to serve our manufacturing community as the president of SME’s North American Manufacturing Research Institution in 2019-20. I will start this position after SME’s 47th North American Manufacturing Research Conference (NAMRC 47) takes place June 10-14 in Erie, Pa.

Every journey into manufacturing is different. Mine started more than 30 years ago and has taken many paths; these collective experiences led me down the path that allowed me to become SME’s 88th president.

As a marketer for software serving the manufacturing industry, Graham Hargreaves partakes in routine communication with peers, customers, prospects and industry insiders. He hears a similar sentiment echoed by attendees at trade shows and industry events that he also hears from customers on a regular basis: The skills gap is not shrinking.

I stepped onto campus last August as a freshman engineering student at the University of Louisville, Louisville, Ky. As eager and worried as I was, the next chapter in my education and young adult life was beginning to unfold.

From ideas to concept sketches converted to scaled drawings to parts, I had products from flying jet packs to entire underwater cities all worked out, except just one minor thing…my jigsaw and rasp could not get me past a crude prototype stage.

About 30 years ago, I was introduced to the amazing world of manufacturing. The Universal Co., a well-established home appliance manufacturer in Tehran, Iran, had already started to be equipped with advanced mechanisms and robots. There, my new work as a manufacturing engineer/die designer produced a deep, passionate love for manufacturing.

A single phone call changed my life forever. In 2003, I was sitting in my office at a fuel cell manufacturing company where I was vice president of operations. A voice on the other end of the line said, “Hello, my name is Mark Tomlinson. I’m calling as a representative of the SME Manufacturing Enterprise Council.”

I’ve been involved with SME for over 19 years—first as a scholarship winner and then as a student member at the Oregon Institute of Technology. Little did I know that I would go on to become even more involved in SME both locally and nationally.