Skip to main content
Sister Publication Links
  • Sustainable Plastics
  • Rubber News
Subscribe
  • Sign Up Free
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • News
    • Processor News
    • Suppliers
    • More News
    • Digital Edition
    • End Markets
    • Special Reports
    • Newsletters
    • Videos
    • Podcasts
    • Injection Molding
    • Blow Molding
    • Film & Sheet
    • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
    • Rotomolding
    • Thermoforming
    • Recycling
    • Machinery
    • Materials
    • Molds/Tooling
    • Product news
    • Design
    • K Show
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Sustainability
    • Public Policy
    • Material Insights Videos
    • Numbers that Matter
    • Automotive
    • Packaging
    • Medical
    • Consumer Products
    • Construction
    • Notable Leaders in Sustainability
    • Processor of the Year
    • Best Places to Work
    • Women Breaking the Mold
    • Rising Stars
    • Diversity
    • Most Interesting Social Media Accounts in Plastics
  • Opinion
    • The Plastics Blog
    • Kickstart
    • One Good Resin
    • Pellets and Politics
    • All Things Data
    • Viewpoint
    • From Pillar to Post
    • Perspective
    • Mailbag
    • Fake Plastic Trees
  • Shop Floor
    • Blending
    • Compounding
    • Drying
    • Injection Molding
    • Purging
    • Robotics
    • Size Reduction
    • Structural Foam
    • Tooling
    • Training
  • Events
    • Plastics News Events
    • Industry Events
    • Injection Molding & Design Expo
    • Livestreams/Webinars
    • Editorial Livestreams
    • Ask the Expert
    • Plastics News Events Library
    • Plastics News Executive Forum
    • Injection Molding & Design Expo
    • Plastics Caps + Closures: A Global Online Event
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
    • Bioplastics Live
    • Numbers that Matter Live
    • PFAS Live
    • Plastics in Politics Live
    • PN Live: Mergers and Acquisitions
    • Polymer Points Live
    • Sustainable Plastics Live
    • Plastics Caps & Closures Library
    • Plastics in Healthcare Library
    • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
  • Rankings & Data
    • Injection Molders
    • Blow Molders
    • Film Sheet
    • Thermoformers
    • Pipe Profile Tubing
    • Rotomolders
    • Mold/Toolmakers
    • LSR Processors
    • Recyclers
    • Compounders - List
    • Association - List
    • Plastic Lumber - List
    • All
  • Directory
  • Resin Prices
    • Resin Prices Overview
    • Commodity Thermoplastics
    • High Temperature Thermoplastics
    • Engineering Thermoplastics
    • Recycled Plastics
    • Thermosets
    • Europe - Virgin
    • Europe - Recycled
    • Europe - Feedstock
  • Custom
    • Sponsored Content
    • LS Mtron Sponsored Content
    • Conair Sponsored Content
    • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
    • ENGEL Sponsored Content
    • White Papers
    • Classifieds
    • Place an Ad
    • Sign up for Early Classified
MENU
Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. News
May 10, 2021 03:00 PM

Challenges kept Shah evolving at Delphi, GM

Headshot of Erin Sloan
Erin Sloan
Audience Engagement Editor
Plastics News Staff
  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Share
  • Email
  • More
    Reprints Print
    Society of Plastics Engineers photo

    Recognized for his 30-year- plus career and numerous patents, Suresh Shah is one of 10 inductees to the 2021 Plastics Hall of Fame, presented by the Plastics Academy.

    Suresh Shah never really retired when he left Delphi Corp. in 2016 after a storied career in the automotive industry.

    "It's like I have two lives," he said. "Put it this way: One is a professional life, and the other is service to the Society [of Plastics Engineers]."

    Shah is one of 10 inductees to the 2021 Plastics Hall of Fame, presented by the Plastics Academy. Recognized for his 30-year-plus career and numerous patents, he recounted his life and career during a recent interview with Plastics News.

    Shah holds 44 intellectual properties — 28 U.S. patents, 10 defensive publications and six trade secrets — with 40 percent of them in production. The national average is about 3 percent for patent holders.

    In addition to his work developing and commercializing important automotive plastics innovations, Shah is well known in the industry for the numerous roles he has played for SPE, including as a board member and chairman of the automotive division. In 2017, he received the division's Lifetime Achievement Award.

    "I thought I was done after the Lifetime Achievement Award," he joked.

    "I'm honored and grateful to the Plastics Academy and the organizers who must have gone through the selection processes," he said.

    Norm Kakarala, a colleague, said Shah earned a reputation as the "fastest problem-solver" in the plastics industry.

    "He has proven himself to be one of the best and most prolific inventors," Kakarala said in a letter nominating Shah to the Hall of Fame.

    Photos courtesy of Suresh Shah

    Suresh Shah was one of the two technical leads and remembered a time when a friend had started up a plastics business and had asked Shah to run it. Ultimately, Shah admits, he had to pass because of his career at Delphi.

    Textile to Troy

    Shah was born to an upper-middle-class family in India, his father the owner of a textile manufacturing business. As Shah began college, pursuing a degree in chemical engineering in Mumbai, his father told him once he's done with that to go ahead and get into textile chemistry.

    He applied for the textile program at the University of Bombay, but when he was asked to put in a second option on the application, he didn't know what to put.

    "He said, 'If you don't get into textile, what will you do?' I asked him what the best second field is and he said plastics," Shah said.

    "And wouldn't you know, I didn't get into textile."

    Shah didn't know much about plastics then, and even had to convince his father that textile and plastics engineering all came down to chemicals.

    He worked for a small rotational molding company before coming to the U.S. in 1980 to begin studying for his master's degree in plastics engineering at the University of Massachusetts. He completed the degree and then went back to India because of the difficulty of finding a job without a green card.

    "An adviser told me to relax and just do the Ph.D. I had never planned on it," he said. "But it all fell into place."

    Shah came back to the States, to the metro Detroit area, and studied to earn a doctorate in polymer chemistry and plastics engineering in 1985.

    That same year, he joined General Motors. With invitations to both its research and its development teams, Shah chose the latter.

    "I like to develop; it's something I've liked since childhood," he said. "I was just not interested in basic research."

    And he set to work bringing in plastics to replace costly and heavy metals in various vehicle components.

    He was the first to invent and introduce a plastics module concept in 1993, which was the SuperPlug, an all-plastic inner door that replaced 50 metal pieces into a single-piece plastics module. This was lauded as an extremely complex part to be commercialized using gas injection molding technology.

    Shah also applied artificial intelligence and Taguchi methods for optimization with in-cavity temperature/pressure sensors, additive manufacturing for prototyping and a fit-and-finish infrared camera. He also developed a nearly entirely plastic steering column.

    "I was lucky to get a lot of opportunities to work on several projects," he said. "When you work on a different product line, which all have different requirements and different challenges, and I love challenges."

    The SuperPlug integrated composite door hardware module was made from a new grade of glass-reinforced Xenoy, a blend of polycarbonate and polybutylene terephthalate resin developed by GE Plastics for the application.

    Keys to success

    Shah thinks one of the important pillars to his success was the support of his wife, Bina; his daughter, Nidhi; and son, Ankur. He traveled a lot in the early '90s while Bina was home raising the children.

    The team of engineers he worked around, support from management and his education really cemented his success.

    "Not many people in the plastics industry have that kind of background so that really helped me to solve any problem or any challenges for inventions," he said.

    He said networking was a big part of the growth of plastics in the automotive industry.

    "You can reach out to another expert in a subject because sometimes you don't know certain things, plastics or not," he remarked. "Especially when electronics were going to be used with the plastic — you try to get an expert in each thing."

    Joint development efforts with material suppliers helped Shah apply his modules and projects into reality. The "win-win" situation helped expedite projects.

    While he advises newcomers to not take on too many projects at once, Shah enjoyed the variety of different projects he worked on and spending the time to leverage support from suppliers often improved the outcome.

    "I used to over-promise it and then you get overwhelmed," he said. "I always had the desire to, but maybe when you come from another country you feel the need to prove yourself."

    Next gen

    Even with the current industry issues — lightweighting, recycling and sustainability, EVs — Shah still finds time to muse about where the industry intends to go.

    It's no secret more of the next generation isn't entering the plastics industry, creating a shortage for skilled workers. Shah wonders if this is because of the "bad name" plastics often gets because of recycling messages. That's one of the challenges Shah is helping to take on along with SPE, as a councilor.

    "For the engineers, I think the advice I could give them are to have more listening skills and writing skills," he said. "It helps the communication with your team because a slight lack in communication now can make or break the whole project."

    Across many industries, and even in his own family, Shah remarked on the millennials' affinity for job-hopping — a few years here, a few there. Most Hall of Fame members stuck with one company throughout their entire career, Shah said.

    "Looking back, I was in a comfort zone. You keep getting promotions; I was at the highest technical level at a very young age — 45 — at Delphi," he said.

    He was one of the two technical leads and remembered a time when a friend had started up a plastics business and had asked Shah to run it. Ultimately, Shah admits, he had to pass because of his career at Delphi.

    "A mentor of mine told me to always ask the why, who, when, where and how, and I always asked that of every project," he said. "Because that way you can go into the depth of the project."

    He urged young engineers to think outside of the box and to accept a different way of thinking.

    "Think of each challenge as an opportunity — only then will the innovations come."

    RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
    Tennessee-based insulation maker adding equipment, jobs
    Letter
    to the
    Editor

    Do you have an opinion about this story? Do you have some thoughts you'd like to share with our readers? Plastics News would love to hear from you. Email your letter to Editor at [email protected]

    Most Popular
    1
    An 8,000-ton dream for Milacron, 20/20 Custom Molded Plastics
    2
    US Merchants opens curtain on growing injection molding operations
    3
    Report: Tekni-Plex may be for sale
    4
    Rising costs prompt delay in Corpus Christi PET plant construction
    5
    Plastics processors face automation needs, sustainability demands
    SIGN UP FOR OUR FREE NEWSLETTERS
    EMAIL ADDRESS

    Please enter a valid email address.

    Please enter your email address.

    Please verify captcha.

    Please select at least one newsletter to subscribe.

    Find more newsletters at plasticsnews.com/newsletters.

    You can unsubscribe at any time through links in these emails. For more information, see our Privacy Policy.

    Get our newsletters

    Staying current is easy with Plastics News delivered straight to your inbox, free of charge.

    Subscribe today

    Subscribe to Plastics News

    Subscribe now
    Connect with Us
    • LinkedIn
    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram

    Plastics News covers the business of the global plastics industry. We report news, gather data and deliver timely information that provides our readers with a competitive advantage.

    Contact Us

    1155 Gratiot Avenue
    Detroit MI 48207-2997

    Customer Service:
    877-320-1723

    Resources
    • About
    • Staff
    • Editorial Calendar
    • Media Kit
    • Data Store
    • Digital Edition
    • Custom Content
    • People
    • Contact
    • Careers
    • Sitemap
    Related Crain Publications
    • Sustainable Plastics
    • Rubber News
    • Tire Business
    • Urethanes Technology
    Legal
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Request
    Copyright © 1996-2023. Crain Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    • News
      • Processor News
        • Injection Molding
        • Blow Molding
        • Film & Sheet
        • Pipe/Profile/Tubing
        • Rotomolding
        • Thermoforming
        • Recycling
      • Suppliers
        • Machinery
        • Materials
        • Molds/Tooling
        • Product news
        • Design
      • More News
        • K Show
        • Mergers & Acquisitions
        • Sustainability
        • Public Policy
        • Material Insights Videos
        • Numbers that Matter
      • Digital Edition
      • End Markets
        • Automotive
        • Packaging
        • Medical
        • Consumer Products
        • Construction
      • Special Reports
        • Notable Leaders in Sustainability
        • Processor of the Year
        • Best Places to Work
        • Women Breaking the Mold
        • Rising Stars
        • Diversity
        • Most Interesting Social Media Accounts in Plastics
      • Newsletters
      • Videos
      • Podcasts
    • Opinion
      • The Plastics Blog
      • Kickstart
      • One Good Resin
      • Pellets and Politics
      • All Things Data
      • Viewpoint
      • From Pillar to Post
      • Perspective
      • Mailbag
      • Fake Plastic Trees
    • Shop Floor
      • Blending
      • Compounding
      • Drying
      • Injection Molding
      • Purging
      • Robotics
      • Size Reduction
      • Structural Foam
      • Tooling
      • Training
    • Events
      • Plastics News Events
        • Plastics News Executive Forum
        • Injection Molding & Design Expo
        • Plastics Caps + Closures: A Global Online Event
        • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum
      • Industry Events
      • Injection Molding & Design Expo
      • Livestreams/Webinars
      • Editorial Livestreams
        • Bioplastics Live
        • Numbers that Matter Live
        • PFAS Live
        • Plastics in Politics Live
        • PN Live: Mergers and Acquisitions
        • Polymer Points Live
        • Sustainable Plastics Live
      • Ask the Expert
      • Plastics News Events Library
        • Plastics Caps & Closures Library
        • Plastics in Healthcare Library
        • Women Breaking the Mold Networking Forum Library
    • Rankings & Data
      • Injection Molders
      • Blow Molders
      • Film Sheet
      • Thermoformers
      • Pipe Profile Tubing
      • Rotomolders
      • Mold/Toolmakers
      • LSR Processors
      • Recyclers
      • Compounders - List
      • Association - List
      • Plastic Lumber - List
      • All
    • Directory
    • Resin Prices
      • Resin Prices Overview
      • Commodity Thermoplastics
      • High Temperature Thermoplastics
      • Engineering Thermoplastics
      • Recycled Plastics
      • Thermosets
      • Europe - Virgin
      • Europe - Recycled
      • Europe - Feedstock
    • Custom
      • Sponsored Content
      • LS Mtron Sponsored Content
      • Conair Sponsored Content
      • KraussMaffei Sponsored Content
      • ENGEL Sponsored Content
      • White Papers
      • Classifieds
        • Place an Ad
        • Sign up for Early Classified