 | The Puget Sound Chapter (Western Washington) has about 200 members that are members of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) from about 60 different companies all around the Greater Puget Sound area. |
| Our main focus as a Chapter is our monthly Speaker Meetings and Tours, as well as providing networking opportunities for our chapter members. |
| We currently have Speaker Meetings alternating each month with Tours during our program year (September to May). Most meetings start at 6:30 PM and are open to quests, but some events require reservations due to space limitations on tours. |
| We usually have 20 - 30 people at Chapter events. Our tours are very popular, but we usually have to limit the tour size to only 20 or 25 people at the host's request. |
| We have a very brief business meeting at our dinner meetings and leave most of the time to socializing/networking before the meal. The speaker's presentation follows the meal. We try to have informative speakers on various Industrial Engineering topics. We are very careful to screen out "sales oriented" presentations. We do not pay our speakers, but we give them a small gift with the IIE logo on it (for example, coffee cup). |
| We have everyone fill out a meeting evaluation form following tours and meetings. We have an information display with local Chapter and IIE National information on display at all dinner meetings. We also have newsletters, Board member lists, and special flyers on the next Chapter events at each meeting. |
| Our meetings and tours are open to visitors and guests. We usually have one joint meeting with APICS (American Production & Inventory Control Society) each year, due to common interests. |
| In addition to our regular Chapter tours, we occasionally have WCM (World-Class Manufacturing) tours that are much more in-depth. |
| We have a monthly Chapter newsletter ("The IIE Informant") which is published all year. We mainly use it to inform the members of upcoming events, Board decisions, chapter plans, local job opportunities, and a few feature articles. |
| We currently exchange our newsletter with several western senior IIE Chapters (Region 10 and western Canada). Our publication has received several awards for its consistency and content from IIE National. |
| We participate in IIE National’s Chapter Activity Report award program and use this to help plan and focus our chapter's activities. |
| We have about eight chapter officers and board members that perform duties. The current Chapter President is Kristian Luttrell; the President-Elect position is currently open. The new chapter officers take over in April of each year. |
| We have sent representatives to IIE National’s Leadership Conferences as well as Regional Leadership Conferences over the last several years. |
| We have monthly Board meetings and have Board minutes distributed to all Board members. Our Board meetings are open to all Chapter members. We have action item focused meetings and try to use the opportunity for discussion of new topics. |
| We have a complete set of written Job Duties for all chapter officer and focal positions. |
| We keep extensive chapter records, which are used to reference past approaches to chapter events and activities (such as in planning for conferences). |
| We partner with the Student Chapter of IIE at the University of Washington. This allows us to have an impact on future IE's, their development, and growth. It is also an opportunity to recruit future senior chapter members. |
| We have a Mentor Program which matches senior chapter members with interested student chapter members. Students spend a day (or half day) at a company seeing how Industrial Engineering is typically practiced. |
| Annually, we give two University of Washington student awards ($200 to a Senior, $200 to a Junior) to help with tuition and related educational expenses. |
| The student chapter is paid on a contract basis to put labels on our newsletter and sort it for bulk mailing. |
| We have recently started a Community Affairs program, with activities centering around helping Puget Sound companies (e.g., Northwest Center Industries). |
| We keep our membership database digitally, and carry several non-members as well, who receive our newsletter. We occasionally publish a membership directory which includes a copy of our chapter's plan. We send out a new member letter (and newsletter and other information) to new dues paying IIE National members. We contact all dropped members to encourage then to renew and to find out why they did not renew their membership. |
| We have a Career Services activity for members seeking employment and employees seeking Industrial Engineers. We list job openings in our newsletter and have several prepared 'white papers" on career planning and job searching. |
| We conduct an annual Membership Survey as well as have meeting and tour surveys at every event. We use the results from these surveys to revise our chapter plans and to plan the next year's program topics and tours. |
| Our Chapter is an active member of the Puget Sound Engineering Council (PSEC), which has about 23 societies. We have a PSEC representative that attends their monthly dinner meetings. We list our chapter's events in PSEC's monthly flyer. |
| We participate in PSEC's annual two day Engineer's Fair with display booths from all member societies. This is usually targeted at middle school and high school students and is done in conjunction with National Engineer's Week. |
| We participate in PSEC's Engineering Forum and the annual Engineers Banquet and Awards Meeting. |
