Author: Melissa Gray

We started off the conference with opening speaker, Dawn Schaible, Director of Engineering at NASA Langley Research Center. She provided insight to NASA Langley’s past, present, and future. She overviewed NASA’s planned return America to the moon in 2024. This will include America’s first woman to step foot on the moon.

Anne Weiss and Rosemary Smith followed up with a rousing and eye opening presentation on how learning is changing for children. We need to reimagine learning and we need to inspire the future STEM students

The Statistics Session 1 had great presentations by Doug Fisher, Manuela Bucci, and David Hansch. Manuela was presented with honorary mention for her paper with Colin MacFarlane.

Bill Boze, John Hargrave, and Yi-Ling Tam presented after lunch on the Mass Properties Certification SAWE is working towards. They reviewed the benefits for SAWE and its members, market survey results that have helped build their roadmap, and a notional model. If you want to be involved in the certification process, please contact Yi-Ling

Anjie Emmett started off the afternoon statistics session. Having worked on the abort system for the Orion space crew module, she discussed applying the law of propagation of uncertainties. Robert Hundl followed with an overview of evaluating Center of Gravity Envelope using a probabilistic approach. He went over Monte Carlo Simulations in Excel and how we can use these for sensitivity studies as well as providing us with a sense of risk.

I ended the day with Nick Marickovich’s presentation on his journey on the Appalachian Trail and how backpack weight effected this. Great presentation!

I would love to hear how the other sessions went and your thoughts on the day and the presentations!

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We have changed the format of SnP Day on Tuesday of the SAWE Conference in Norfolk VA.  We will only have a 30 minute opening an no recap session at the end of the day.  This will give each industry committee more time for discussions and some other exciting activities. The industry committee meetings will be from 8:30 to 5:00PM with the traditional coffee breaks and SnP Luncheon from 12:00 to 1:30 PM.

I am pleased to announce the following additional activities:

RP C- 9 Data Exchange – ISO-10303-242 Meeting from 3:30-5:00 in room 1783

Sebastian-Verian Herda will lead a meeting to define the scope of their project titled Mass Properties Digital Data Attributes for PLM data exchange & Reporting,  The purpose of the meeting is to review and to agree on a Project Proposal.   As I understand it (Andy Schuster VP-SnP), the purpose of the project  is create cconsistent PLM data and exchange protocols will simplify MPD functionality set up in PLM & ERP systems. The STEP AP 242 file (ISO 10303-242) is a system independent file format and is the best established specification within the Automotive, Aerospace, and Defence industries. It specifies the application protocol for Model based 3D engineering.  The STEP effort will be added to the other data exchange methods used by SAWE members such as MPEX, and RP M-1 to create a Cross Industry Function Recommended Practice.  The meeting will clarify my interpretation.

Mass Properties Engineer Certification Discussions

Each Industry Committee has set aside an hour of the day to discuss the impact of this program to their industry.  The program will be presented in a 90 minute presentation on Monday afternoon during the technical session.  The program leaders Yi-ling Tam, John Hargrave, Bill Boze and Clint Stephenson, will visit each meeting to get feedback based on a set of open ended questions to draw out your opinions.  From discussions at the SnP Standards Review Board meeting, we know that the impact of the Mass Properties Engineer Certification program will be dramatically different between industries, and we want to know how dramatic.  For example the Marine and Military Aircraft industries may want everything in English, while the Offshore industry may want the training materials and exams in English, Portuguese and Korean so that the detailed design and construction workers can do things in their native language.  The committee would like your thoughts on the program.

Weight Engineers Handbook – Update Discussions

Damian Yanez, and Andy Schuster will visit each Industry Committee for a 30 minute discussion of what should be updated in the new revision of the handbook.  For example :

• We know that some sections are so out of date (i.e. Crew Systems and Power Systems from the 1960’s Mercury program), and need to be updated.  The existing sections will not help us  to get to the moon in 2024 or mars in 2035. 
• We will also  ask each IC to commit to reviewing sections in the handbook that apply to their industry, by the end of the summer.  All we want to know whether the 2011 edition has the right information..  For example we’ll ask the marine Industry Committee to review the Marine section of the Handbook for errors omissions, etc.
• Finally, we will get commitments from those Industry Committees such as the offshore, for their schedule to provide a new section to the handbook.

The Gulfstream team of MPE’s is about a third of the way through converting the old handbook into MS Word.  This is a significant accomplishment!!!  We owe it to them to assure the data they convert or include is up to  date and accurate. 

Andy Schuster

SAWE has been blessed with a great supply of technical content for our May conference in Norfolk VA. Earlier the technical committee had started to refuse submissions due to a lack of presentation slots. It is now planned to open up an additional technical track, and so be able to include all of the initially proposed as well as some later incoming papers. We hope this is another great reason for you to attend our conference. Attendee’s receive electronic copies of our technical content as well.  So get registered, and get your accommodations. Remember, registrations conducted after May 3rd incur a $50 late charge, and training course registrations are to be completed no later than April 19th.

ANSI-SAWE STD M-4 is in the committee draft review stage and has been posted on the Standards Public Review page. Any comments should be submitted by 5/1/2019.

RP A-7 is in the committee draft review stage and has been posted on the Standards Public Review page. Any comments should be submitted by 5/1/2019.  

RP O-3 is in the public draft review stage and has been posted on the Standards Public Review page. This document is available for anyone to review (general public or SAWE member). Any comments should be submitted by 4/26/2019.

http://sawe.org/technical/rp/publicreview

An email was sent to membership about a Mass Properties Engineer Certification. Below is the email you should have received along with a survey. This is an important opportunity for the Mass Properties career field, and we strongly encourage all members of SAWE to take the survey.

SAWE is exploring creating a Mass Properties Engineer Certification program.  The envisioned program would provide mass properties engineers with credentials of their qualifications in a tiered level of experience structure.  It would provide organizations with confidence that certified mass properties personnel have qualifications recognized by industry standards that will produce safe, efficient, and top quality results for their products.  Eventually we envision qualifiying this certification program for ANSI accreditation and ISO compliance. 

The following is a survey to get your feedback and thoughts about Mass Properties Engineer Certification.  The program is currently in development and results of our exploration will be reviewed this May at the International Conference both at the Board of Director’s Meeting and in a special forum on Monday afternoon.  Please take the survey and give us your thoughts and feedback.

Mass Properties Engineer Certification Survey

If you are interested in writing an article for the Spring Journal, submissions are due April 19th.

Please feel free to reach out to VP Publications Nick Marickovich (nmarickovich@gmail.com) or the Deputy Publications Melissa Gray (melissa.gray@sawe.org) if you have questions. The subjects can vary from mentoring to projects/papers you have been involved in.

If you have ever considered writing for the Journal, now is the time!

Please send all Journal Articles for submission to Melissa Gray (melissa.gray@sawe.org)

The Society of Allied Weight Engineers (SAWE) would like to extend a special conference invitation to our student members.  The SAWE organization, invested in encouraging and mentoring the next generation of mass properties engineers, is excited to host our student attendees in Norfolk, Virginia, May 18^th – 23^rd, with either free (for student presenters) or reduced cost (for non-presenting student attendees) registration for the entire conference, including the welcome reception; admittance to all paper sessions; standards and practices meetings and luncheon; a 90% reduced rate on the automotive lateral stability class; and the awards banquet at the conclusion of the conference.  In addition, our student attendees are invited to try their reasoning skills in the Escape Room, where you’re tasked to observe your surroundings, search for clues, and solve complex puzzles to find that special item in your room and escape in a defined amount of time – as challenging (but more fun) than a final exam! There are 1st Place ($1,000), 2^nd Place ($750), and 3^rd Place ($500) awards for the top three student papers. You do not have to attend the conference and present your paper to win, but you need to submit your abstract on or before March 1^st.  We hope you can attend the 78^th International SAWE Conference – with or without having written a paper – and find it a wonderful opportunity to talk to and interact with our professional members, vendors, and industry sponsors.  We are happy to answer your questions and share our professional journeys with you!

Dr. Donna Gerren

Vice-President, Academic Affairs

University of Colorado Boulder