May Midwest Chapter Meeting Report

Yes, we were at it again...The latest meeting of the Midwest Regional Chapter was held on Monday May 4 at the Haworth facility in Holland, Michigan.

Gotta give credit where it's due, that Haworth facility is a wonderful place!! Light, open and spacious, the new headquarters building looks to be a very nice place to work, and good on the environment as well!! Kudo's to the folks at Haworth for a wonderful job!!

From a meeting perspective, this was our largest yet. We had 8 different companies represented, 4 of them first time attendees! With a total of 36 people in attendance we are continuing our growth spurt. The question is, can we maintain it?? Only time will tell.

The focus on this meeting was Specials. 4 member companies covered their processes for Specials in preparation for our next modeling challenge. In this challenge, we will be extending the computer model from our original challenge to include a couple of "special" items. It will be very interesting to see just how each company represents these items in their structures..

Panel discussions were not as large a part of this meeting as in the past, but there was still some spirited discussion around CAD integration. Some members (guess who?) want to push the envelope well beyond CAD and into a full "reusable product data" model. That one seemed to go over some heads in the room, but in general I think it's a concept that will gain more traction as time goes on. Watch this space for more information on this particular topic..I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone that I have some strong opinions on this particular subject...

What is a local chapter meeting without a networking event?? We had ours at the New Holland Brewing company (it's a popular spot). What we didn't account for when planning is that the city of Holland has it's annual "Tulip TIme" festival!! Parking was interesting, but as usual the food and beer was good. Bummer that they didn't have any Blue Goat left, but I'll get over it I suppose..

All in all, a very good meeting. Hopefully, you are in the process of organizing you very own chapter meeting!! When you do, please be sure to post the details here!!

Until next time,

Steve