NCMS Celebrates CTMA’s 20th Anniversary with its First Annual Member Meeting
The National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS) hosted its first annual NCMS Membership Meeting last week in Richmond VA. Designed to highlight the variety of ways NCMS members benefit from their membership, the meeting was attended by potential, new, and experienced members.
“Our intention was to provide our members the opportunity to receive updates on NCMS and network in a small group, face-to-face environment for maximum connectivity. Hearing from other members how they best use their benefits to create top-line growth and expand their R&D footprint was beneficial for everyone attending,” said Pam Hurt, Membership and Communications Director at NCMS.
The keynote address, “The State of NCMS” was given by Dana Ellis, Commercial Technologies for Maintenance Activities (CTMA) Senior Program Manager at NCMS. “We want to take care of our members from the minute they join NCMS, through programs and projects, to ensure their satisfaction,” he said. “The government looks to NCMS as their technology expert and we bring it to the finish line with our members.”
The highlight of the meeting was the industry panel of NCMS member companies: PPG, Siemens, and Universal Synaptics. These three members represented small and large companies, with a diverse history with NCMS, providing robust viewpoints from a variety of perspectives. Brian Kornish – PPG, Sam Lewis – Siemens, and Ken Anderson – Universal Synaptics engaged attendees with robust explanations of how they use the NCMS membership. The Q&A that followed the presentations proved to be insightful and thought-provoking for all parties creating a productive, interactive dialogue.
The meeting was sponsored by PPG Aerospace, an NCMS member since 2015. “We wanted to be a big part of this event because we would like more people to know who PPG is and what we do. There was a diverse group of people attending, which created a great networking event,” said Brian Kornish, Program Manager – Government Contracts with PPG’s Corporate Science & Technology team..
Community, Collaborative and Strategic level members were invited to the NCMS Member Meeting, highlighted by 85% of our Strategic level members attending, including Delta Air Lines, GE, Lockheed Martin, PPG, and Siemens.
Alexander Daly, Director of Aerospace and Defense at PTC, Inc. “It is clear the DoD is pivoting to a faster, more agile means of acquiring technology platforms. In our space, there is a real demand signal out there for software capabilities in PLM, CAD, IoT and AR, which normally start with a proof-of-concept. NCMS is a means to help our DoD customers rapidly layer in these capabilities in a strategic way.”
With the success of this first NCMS Member Meeting, Hurt plans to make this an annual event. “This was incredibly productive and informative and we’re looking forward to how we can top it next year.”