Kickstart: Connecting girls with STEM leaders

Hillenbrand Inc., the owner of the Milacron machinery brand, tooling components supplier DME and hot-runner maker Mold-Masters, is the national sponsor of Girls Inc.'s STEM and College and Career Readiness Program.

The program is "designed to build young women's aspirations and support them in identifying, entering and thriving in opportunities beyond high school," Hillenbrand said in a news release. The program connects students with diverse STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) professionals to help them find potential careers in STEM fields.

"We also seek to create an environment of inclusion and engagement, and continuously foster a culture in which women are given meaningful opportunities to grow, develop and reach career goals. Ultimately, we want Hillenbrand to become a destination employer and develop a robust pipeline of diverse talent at all levels," Hillenbrand President and CEO Kim Ryan said in the release.

As part of its sponsorship, Hillenbrand will develop video profiles of female STEM leaders within the company. The firm and its business units have been involved in other STEM programs for women, including a pre-COVID "introduce a girl to engineering" event at Milacron operations in Ohio early 2020.

The Society of Plastics Engineers wants to celebrate some "unsung heroes" of the plastics industry with a new award for 2023 from its mold technologies division for Mold Repair/Maintenance Technician of the Year.

"This is a new award from the division intended to recognize those practitioners that are the 'crime scene investigators' of our industry," SPE said in a news release. "They are often charged with trying to determine the root cause of mold/tooling failures even without parts."

The mold making division just named its 2022 Mold Maker and Mold Designer of the Year: Rick Finnie of M.R. Mold & Engineering Corp. and Marcin Zajac of A1 Tool Corp.

The new award will go to someone who demonstrates superior undertanding of tooling, can convert his or her technical knowledge into training for the next generation and contributes to the community around them. The winner will have $1,000 donated in their name to a training program of their choice.

The nomination process will be announced at a later date.

You can now download the March/April print edition of our sister paper Sustainable Plastics, with a focus on the role automation and digitalization play in greener production.

The digital transformation has proven to be closely intertwined with sustainability in industry, in ways that might be unexpected. Industry 4.0 tools, developed to create an advanced manufacturing environment, can also play a part in environmental, social and corporate governance efforts.

Reducing waste in production is big for both the bottom line and sustainability, Editor Karen Laird writes.

Sustainable Plastics can be downloaded here for free.