November 2020 Volume 2

PRESIDENT'S NOTE

President's Note

for them to interact with their industry contacts. The Marketing Committee did a great job securing presentations and attendee feedback was very positive such as this note: “Jim--Good seeing you as well. What a crazy 2020. Not likely to forget it anytime soon. The programwas very good and I was happy to see that many attendees came, both in person and virtually.” Special thanks to our Senior Manager Meetings & Events, Angie Gibian for a yeoman’s job of making all the technology work like a charm. Angie earned herDigital Event Strategist (DES) certification just in time to guide us into this new normal for event production. At FIA, we view this attendance as a positive sign for in-person attendance at our upcoming Forge Fair show to be held May 18 20, 2021 in Detroit. With an estimated attendance of 1,500 to 2,000 attendees scattered across 100,000 square feet of show space – we’re already naturally socially distanced! Booth sales have been impressive and just slightly off our 2019 pace. Forge Fair 2021 will be our first major event since the pandemic hit full-force in March of 2020, and we know the industry is ready to meet. Exhibiting at Forge Fair is not just for equipment makers and suppliers; we get a fair number of OEMs and Tier 1 & 2 buyers walking the show looking to meet forgers. Remember – we are the ONLY forging specific show in North America. Forge Fair 2021 already has seven forging producers taking booths. More details on Forge Fair can be found at www.forgefair.com. Can’t wait to see you all there. The Year of 2020 and Beyond We are close to concluding 2020 and a new year beckons. Change is the one constant we can all bank on. My belief is we all crave the relative stability we enjoyed prior to March 2020…knowing where we’re going for Thanksgiving and Christmas…not worrying so much about our elders and others vulnerable to this virus…going to restaurants. I still think about some of our members whose families suffered greatly due to the COVID-19. We’ve all had our cheese moved, but losing family is the ultimate painful price. What words come to mind when I think of the forging industry? Proud. Hardworking. Resourceful. Resilient. Conservative. Change is afoot, and our administration is changing in 2021. It was for this reason that in 2018 our FIA Board, with advice from its Public Policy Committee, approved staff to research and hire the best bipartisan lobby firmwe could afford. Off toWashington D.C. I headed with our CFO/COO Joe Boni, who had some background

Welcome to Our First Research & Technology Issue To reinforce our commitment to our Forging Foundation and the advancement of our industry, welcome to the first ‘Research & Technology’ issue of FIA Magazine. Our

largest issue ever, we’ve packed in something for everyone. For a forging industry magazine, an unprecedented 11 full technical papers follow and we still have the regular columns you’ve come to enjoy in our Operations & Management and Materials sections. Make sure to read this month’s Members Speak column as an introduction to our current Forging Foundation president Raymundo Ordonez, Ph.D. and Metallurgist at Ellwood Materials Technology. While we’re talking foundation matters, we’ve kicked off the Fall fundraising campaigns for the President’s Challenge and Anvil Supporters. We are all in some tough times right now, but please don’t forget all the great work we're doing with scholarships, technology grants, internships and now our newer focus on community colleges and trade schools. Please join FIA Board Chairman, Mike Gill and I today by making a personal $1,500 pledge to the President’s Challenge. The dollars will be matched by FIERF and sent to a community college or trade school in your neighborhood. Students awarded funds will expect to tour your plant and take FIA’s newly repackaged Forging Fundamentals 101 as an e-learning course. FIA staff will handle it from there, once we receive your donation. So Good to See Many of You Again FIA’s Marketing Committee nearly doubled their 2019 attendance during the 2020MarketingWorkshop held in downtown Cleveland on October 21-22, 2020. The FIA team delivered the event in a ‘hybrid format’ with 40 coming to Cleveland in-person, and 31 choosing to attend virtually. Including speakers, we had a total attendance of 91 – really an impressive turnout. Many members and speakers remarked this was their first business trip of the year, and were thankful FIA made the effort to accommodate in-person attendance, which included abiding by all CDC and State of Ohio social distancing guidelines. We were spaced out across a large conference space and all wearing masks. We made it work, and it was downright joyful seeing so many of our members in-person and

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

Board of Directors

Peter Campbell Joseph Cipriani John Coward Robert Dimitrieff Marcelo T. Garza

Ron K. Janzen Chelsea Lantto John Pale Greg Timmons Dan Ulven

OPERATIONS Joseph R. Boni joe@forging.org DESIGN Lorean Crowder lorean@forging.org

CHAIRMAN Mike Gill VICE CHAIRMAN Douglas McIntyre

FIA MAGAZINE | NOVEMBER 2020 3