February 2023 Volume 5

PRESIDENT'S NOTE

President's ote

Happy New Year to all of our FIA members! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and recharged your batteries. It appears we have an interesting start to this new year. The press and many economists pretty much have declared manufacturing’s already in recession, and yet most forgers and forging suppliers are keeping plenty busy. It’s early and tougher months

enjoying this challenge and we hope you’ll stick around Forge Fair on Thursday, May 25 to meet all the teams and cast your own vote for a team’s tuning fork! Also meet Ben Abbott of the History Channel’s Forged with Fire programduring his keynote presentation at Forge Fair. Ben will present the awards to the winning student teams and is super pumped to attend his first Forge Fair. Special thanks to Amanda Dureiko, Senior Manager – Foundation & Workforce Development, for working with our members to create this first contest and first summer manufacturing camp! Bravo! One more first for the FIERF! Our own FIERF Executive Director, Angie Gibian, has put together a children’s book focused on forging! Forging with Freddy is currently being illustrated and you will meet Freddy later this year. Many of our forgers are simply brilliant reaching young people to get them into manufacturing…Scot Forge andWalker Forge come tomind. Nobody is going to solve our lack of workforce challenges except us, so let’s get after it early - and just know your FIERF Board of Trustees has been discussing this mission and leading the staff into action. More firsts!This should be the year FIA learns that we’re approved by Congress for a significant multi-year forging improvement program administered by the Department of Defense to 1) fund research and equipment at our partner universities and 2) fund curriculum and equipment at community colleges and trade schools to create more students skilled at automation, maintenance, and mechatronics. Read more about this in our Government Affairs column on page 4. Now starting my 6th year as your President & CEO, I remain as energized as ever and so proud of your FIA staff and FIA Board of Directors that works so hard for you all. We have a great team here and as always, the highlight of our year is spending time with members at our many programs. Let’s have a great year everyone! Best regards,

may hit us mid-year or later. For its part, the FIA enterprise is rolling and our own economic indicators – Forge Fair booths, attendance at events, membership growth, sponsorships etc. – appear on track. Many times, lack of support for FIA membership and activities is a leading indicator of not good economic times on the horizon. We are just not seeing yet what most economists are talking about. I do hope we’ve seen the last of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes. Seems most of the economic indicators show inflation retreating, so what’s the point of further increases? Especially if there is any truth to recession hitting manufacturing and broader economy. A Year of Firsts The FIA Team is back at it executing our many projects tagged to the FIA-FIERF Strategic Plan. With the struggle to find qualified employees or anyone willing to work, the staff here is laser-focused on how we can best help the membership. This summer we’ll run our first pilot summer manufacturing camp – Forge The Future! – at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland. Activities will include students (middle school to freshman high schoolers) using their hands and tools/machines at the college to manufacture an item, some education from faculty and our members, and finally some forging plant tours. Future goals are to 1) secure a donor for an endowment to quickly expand the camp programs and 2) host a camp in every community college or trade school where we have members. Let me ask you something: What happens if you slap a tuning fork? It hertz . Ha-ha! Isn’t that a good one!? No, I have not gone more bonkers than I already was, but I am happy to share that FIERF is hosting its first school forging competition at Forge Fair. Eleven universities are competing – forging an acoustic resonator (tuning fork) to an assigned frequency. We hear the students are really

James R. Warren President and CEO Forging Industry Association

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

Board of Directors

Antonio Alvarez Perry Bennett Peter Campbell

Mark Derry JimKravec Mike Morgus Scott Naar James Romeo

ASSOCIATE EDITOR Amanda Dureiko amanda@forging.org DESIGN Lorean Crowder lorean@forging.org

CHAIRMAN Dan Ulven VICE CHAIRMAN Chelsea Lantto

Mark Candy John Coward

FIA MAGAZINE | FEBRUARY 2023 1