This year, Spokane's SME Chapter 248 has been working with the GSI's Manufacturing Roundtable, Spokane Public Schools, Spokane Community College and local businesses to determine ways to enhance regional efforts promoting science and technology in our region's K-12 schools.  Chapter 248 has over 100 members with engineering and manufacturing backgrounds and is linked to many programs offered nationally by SME (including the Lean Bronze, Silver and Gold Certification programs).
 
One such program offered by SME is called the Gateway Academy, a day camp summertime experience for students having completed 6th - 8th grades and designed to inspire campers to learn more about science, technology, engineering and math.  Working with GSI and the West Valley School District, the team's goal is to offer a Gateway Academy in the Spokane region next summer (2010).
 
For more information on this effort, please contact John Dickson at (509) 842-4074.
 

Today and Tomorrow
Henry Ford in collaboration with Samuel Crowther
Productivity Press, Cambridge, MA
ISBN: 0-915299-36-4
Why read a book first published in 1926?  What could anyone from 80+ years ago have to say to a modern practitioner of Lean today? In the early 1980's, Norman Bodek met Taiichi Ohno, the creator of Toyota's production system, and heard him state that "he learned it all from Henry Ford's book."  Today and Tomorrow is Henry Ford's book. In Today and Tomorrow, Henry Ford speaks of how he grew a company that achieved the unthinkable - cutting the price of a car in half, doubling wages and producing a car from ore to finished product in 81 hours. For Lean practitioners it's all in this book: Insistence that work environments be spotlessly clean; businesses must think of serving their communities and society at large; production techniques can't be taken for granted but must be continuously changed for improvement; read more...