The Manufactures Association for Plastics Processors Inc. has announced its 2023 MAPP Innovation Award winners.
The awards highlight automated manufacturing solutions and were given at the recent Benchmarking and Best Practices Conference in Indianapolis.
The award is broken into two subcategories: smart manufacturing solutions and labor solutions.
2023 is the ninth year for the MAPP Innovation Award. This year, MAPP added an automation hall to the event to highlight the winners. The group also has a best practices book that contains all the MAPP members' innovative ideas, benchmarking and best practices from the event.
Beaumont Advanced Processing of Erie, Pa., won top honors in the smart manufacturing solutions category.
The company's focus was on monitoring off-shift hours that would keep presses running if malfunctions were to occur, but resolve this issue in a low-cost way. Beaumont developed a security system that would notify processors' phones to keep them updated on the condition of their machines.
The system allows them to restart, shut off or be warned of any water leaks on the machines.
Natech Plastics Inc. of Ronkomkona, N.Y., was also honored for its development of an automated assembly line to onshore a labor-intensive assembly. The filter assembly requires two molded housings, a filter, two protective meshes and an O-ring. With this new assembly line, Natech's goal was to onshore a program that usually could only be done overseas, due to labor costs and to optimize their client's logistics.
Noble Plastics Inc. of Grand Coteau, La., took third place for its solution that can monitor production data. Noble created a single board computer that can be plugged into the common feature on injection molding machines, the USB flash drive import. Information is logged and managed through the computer and throughout networks.
