Meet the Sponsor at PMTS

Since 1933, the PMPA (Precision Machined Products Association) has represented our industry. In the association business, it is important to have a pretty clear understanding about your value proposition, your ROI for members, and well defined deliverables. 

PMTS represents just one of those deliverables. This year is the eighth edition of this focused trade show, and its track record has been growth even through the recession. Many of you attending PMTS are not PMPA members. Perhaps your visit to the show might be an opportunity to learn more about the association that represents our industry. 

At PMPA, we call this gathering “Effective Associating”—providing members with tools they can use to reduce the risk they face in today’s highly volatile and uncertain market. But the association is also a people business. It’s people that make this industry successful and by working together, we all benefit. 

Recently, past president Jim Hemingway was honored with the 2014 Frank T. McGinnis Award, for service to our industry and our association.

Jim’s career started in the cleaning and shipping department in a shop in 1971 while attending college. He worked in purchasing after college, before rejoining the industry as an outside salesperson. Jim joined PMPA member company Alger Precision Manufacturing LLC in 1990 as an outside salesman. He was vice president of sales, executive vice president, and then was named president of the company in 2008, the same year he was elected president of PMPA, just ahead of the economic recession.

At PMPA, Jim has served two terms on the board of directors. He was association president in 2008 and has served on the association’s marketing, strategic planning, finance, and executive committees. We thought that this excerpt from his acceptance speech spoke volumes about the heart and soul that shop owners bring to bear in their work, in the jobs that they create and in their work of effective associating to make a “difference” for their industry and the role of manufacturing in the nation.

“I would like to thank all of you on behalf of the citizens of the free world. A handful of years ago I had the wonderful opportunity to host an evening such as this, and it happened to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the PMPA. That evening I offered a toast to those in attendance and to the entire membership of the PMPA. Those words still hold true and will always be true. You are the leaders, the innovators the entrepreneurs of manufacturing. You make components for planes, trains, automobiles, tractors, medical devices and plumbing products. Each of you deserve a service/merit award on a daily basis for what you provide to mankind. Your business, through your investments in technology, processes and people, makes a difference in the lives of millions of people. Millions of people enjoy safe drinking water, reliable utilities, safe transportation, convenient communications, labor saving appliances and medical devices—all with the aim of improving our quality of life.  Our precision machined products make all of these possible. Millions of people and thousands of customer companies count on us to make our precision parts every day—to do our best—so they can do what is important for them.

“At the risk of being politically incorrect, which is a term I despise, I would like to ask God to bless our Canadian friends, neighbors and allies. I would ask that God bless all of you, your families and your employees. And I would ask that God continue to bless these United States of America!”

There is an existential joy to our craft in precision manufacturing. A sense of personal economic responsibility to being a good steward of our businesses, helping them to grow, so that our people and their families can also grow and succeed. And there is a joy at a job well done, knowing that we all made an important difference. In the association world, there is satisfaction at recognizing the accomplishments of the champions and mentors in our industry—the folks that make a difference.

There is a lot more to “effective associating” than giving and receiving awards and making speeches. All of us who have benefited from the leadership, mentoring and service of Jim Hemingway and others who have served the association and our industry are appreciative of their work. Stop by PMPA’s booth at PMTS and learn about how “effective associating” can provide benefit to your business as it has for so many people for so long.