Sme Elects 2009 Board Of Directors

Toronto, ON — The Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) has elected three new members to its board of directors and elected five members to its executive committee for 2009. All were installed October 26, 2008, at the SME Fall Board of Directors meeting in Toronto. Their terms officially began on January 1, 2009. The members include:

President: Richard W. Shoemaker, FSME. Shoemaker is currently president and CEO of Hawkeye-Pipe. He is a founding member of SME’s Manufacturing Enterprise Council (MEC). He was elected an SME Fellow in 2004.

President-elect: Barbara M. Fossum, PhD, FSME. Fossum is president of the Gordon Group, a Chicago-based leadership development and change management company. She was elected to the SME College of Fellows in 1996.

Vice-president: Paul D. Bradley, PE. Bradley is managing director for Peterson Industries. Bradley is a recipient of the SME Ralph E. Cross Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award and in 2001 received the Governor’s Leadership Foundation Fellowship Award.

Secretary/treasurer: LaRoux K. Gillespie, Dr Eng, FSME, CMfgE, PE. Gillespie has retired as quality assurance manager of Honeywell’s Federal Manufacturing & Technologies division. An SME Fellow, Gillespie has served on numerous SME committees over the years and has led numerous SME technical conferences.

Also elected to the 2009 executive committee was the at-large member Dennis S. Bray, PhD, FSME. Bray is the former president and CEO of Cincinnati Inc., an advanced manufacturer of metalworking machinery. Bray was elected to the SME College of Fellows in 2003.

The three directors newly elected to serve two-year terms on the board of directors, beginning January 1, 2009 are:

Michael C. Burstein, PhD, CEI, EMCP. Burstein is president of TIPE Inc. and has served the Society in many capacities. In 2006, Burstein received recognition as an outstanding contributor to the development of SME’s Lean Certification program.

Wayne F. Frost, CMfgE. Frost, a production system project manager at John Deere Waterloo Works, manages Deere’s lean manufacturing program. Frost has received many honours, such as the SME Award of Merit, SME President’s Award and the John Deere General Manager’s Award.

Michael R. Watson, CMfgE. Watson is a manufacturing engineer with NACCO Materials Handling Group. He has received many honours from the Society, including three President’s Awards and the 2000 SME Award of Merit.

SME is a professional society supporting manufacturing education. The Society has members in more than 70 countries.