February 2022 Volume 4

PRESIDENT'S NOTE

Great Turnout at Midwest Meeting of Members President's Note

FIA Lobby Day 2022 Lobby Day (virtual) attracted 12 members this year – down a bit from last year’s virtual Lobby Day. We had little choice but to offer this virtually, as it is still difficult to see lawmakers in-person in their capitol offices. Even still we are disappointed that we can’t get more members involved in this event or active with our Public Policy Committee. We cannot keep doing the same thing and expect different results, right? Thank your FIA Board of Directors for approving a full-time Government Affairs position. We’ve located the ideal candidate and we are happy to introduce the person in this issue of FIA Magazine (pg. 6). We look forward to engaging the membership much more with lawmakers; more Washington D.C. visits; reinvigorating our FORGE-PAC, and getting more aggressive with our fight to exist by beating back unfair trade practices perpetrated by China and others who dump or sell forgings at their material-only value. To that end, mark your calendars now for FIA’s Fall Meeting of Members this October 25-26 at the Hyatt Regency Capitol in Washington D.C. This event will have a mini-Lobby Day flair with a couple lawmakers coming to us to present and individual meetings available with your lawmaker. Let’s be more involved so when we complain about Washington D.C. we can do so as being engaged and active…and not sitting back on our heels expecting meaningful change without investing our time and interest. Finally, during our prep for Lobby Day, updating the ‘plant closures’ document shows since 1979, 240 plant closures in North America and 25,000+ job losses – a sobering statistic I hope moves us all to more action. Also sobering: China now claims 50% global market share of forgings – up 20% since 2016. That being said - let’s engage, take action and make 2022 a year of growth and prosperity for our industry! Your Forging Industry Association is already off to a great start! Best regards, James R. Warren

Members and staff wasted no time kicking off 2022 and kicking COVID to the corner! COVID is not over, but thankfully is showing signs of receding; we are over it interfering with our programming! A strong showing of 70

members came out to the Midwest Meeting of Members and were treated to a memorable panel discussion focused on busting down barriers for implementing forging automation. Key takeaways were: get your process right before you automate; it’s typically the grizzled and gray who become robot heroes...not the young gamers; start small and get a win you can build on; volume should not be the dictator of go/no go on starting your automation journey, and we just need to improve and ‘be better’ if we are going to compete and survive. I wish I would have recorded the session as many gems of automation advice came from Rick Recktenwald (Walker Forge), Jim Morris (Adaptec) and Mike Gill (LASCO). My sincere thanks to these gentlemen for their candid remarks. Member feedback has been strong on the whole experience of the panel, seeing everyone again and taking in a great atmosphere at MC Machinery – a Mitsubishi company with machining and wire EDMmachine tools forgers can benefit from (see their ad – back inside cover). Thank you, Bill Isaac, for hosting us. The Forging Lightweight Alloys Issue &Conference Many kudos to FIA’s Lightweight Alloys Committee in assembling our inaugural Forging Lightweight Alloys Conference & Plant Tour. As I type, we are nearly sold out at more than 110 attending – a tremendous response from the membership. Driving our attendance may be the tour of Bharat Forge Aluminum USA which kicks-off the event, or the 16 excellent presentations the committee secured, and finally it can’t hurt to throw in a post-conference golf scramble on Pinehurst No. 2. Don’t miss the three excellent lightweight alloys articles in this issue. While you are flipping through the issue, make sure to read new author Bill Scott’s article Tips for Effective Closed Die Forging Cost and Estimations. (pg. 54) Bill did a nice job, and we look forward to his future articles and a webinar on the same topic.

President and CEO Forging Industry Association

PUBLISHER James R. Warren jwarren@forging.org EDITOR Angela Gibian angela@forging.org Editorial Staff

Board of Directors

Antonio Alvarez Perry Bennett Peter Campbell

Robert Dimitrieff JimKravec Chelsea Lantto James Romeo

DESIGN Lorean Crowder lorean@forging.org AD SALES Keri Kichurchak keri@forging.org

CHAIRMAN Douglas McIntyre VICE CHAIRMAN Dan Ulven

Mark Candy John Coward

FIA MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY 2022 1