Professional Societies

These are web pages for SME International's sister socities. They may be useful for hints for finding information about various technologies or for on-line training.

SME International, our parent society.
ACM (Association for Computing Machinery): Mainly concerned with information technology. They sponsor Special-Interest Groups for such areas as electronic commerce, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, embedded systems, computer interfaces, simulatins, and security. There's also a somewhat interesting magazine about computing.
ACS (American Chemical Society): News about the chemical industry. It may be useful to you for information about plastics and environmental issues.
AES (Abrasive Engineering Society): Info about grinding, abrasives, and water-jet cutting. They offer books about these subjects and news items related to abrasives.
AFE (Association for Facilities Engineering): Resources for plant management and maintenance. They have a magazine with what appear to be practical articles (e.g., an article about lightning protection, Oct. 2003), links to news articles of interest, some useful looking books, and links to OSHA information. There are also a few on-line courses, mainly concerning the Internet (Oct 2003).
APMP (Association of Proposal Management Professionals): This seems to be a small society (c. 1600 members) dedicated to writing good business proposals. The site wasn't working as of 1 Oct 2003, but we find preview the Washington, DC, chapter's site.
ASHRAE (American Soc. of Heating, Refrig., and Air-Cond. Engineers): This might be a source of useful information about indoor air quality and books about HVAC design if you had to do it for yourself. However, the site had an annoying tendency to kill your reviewers web brouser.
ASM International (American Society of Metals): A good source of information about metals and other materials. Buy or subscribe to electronic version of ASM Handbook with exhaustive information about metals. Buy other books about using metals. Read on-line magazines if you're a member ($102/yr). They also have a few courses.
AWS (American Welding Society): A good source for info about developments in welding. They have a nice on-line magazine, training and certification, books and technical papers about welding (many dealing with environmental and reglatory issues).
ISA (Instrument Society of American): Mainly concerned with controls engineering with many direct applications to manufacturing. They also have a bookstore that may supplement what we can get from SME and links to technical information about controls.
PMA (Precision Metalforming Association): A professional association for the Metalforming Industry.
PMI (Project Management Instrument): A professional association for project managers. They have the usual services: magazine, bookstore, training seminars, web courses, and certification.
SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers): Serving Engineers in the Automotive Industry.
SPIE (Society for Optical Engineering): Resources and information for a huge range of applications of optics. Areas of interest include machine vision, applications of lasers, military application of optics and machine vision, microelectronics manufacturing, and the latest applications in astronomy. The Society sponsors a wide range of conferences in amazingly diverse areas and publishes proceedings that are often useful for finding out about current techniques and technologies.
SPE (Society of Plastics Engineers): Good resources for work with plastics. They have a very extensive collection of books for sale and targeted training materials.