Purdue, Indiana manufacturer to be highlighted at D.C. summit
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — A small Indiana company's success story, made possible, in part, with help from a Purdue University project, will be highlighted during a Washington, D.C., manufacturing summit Thursday and Friday (Dec. 8 and 9).
The Council on Competitiveness, a nonpartisan group of CEOs, university presidents and labor leaders working to ensure U.S. prosperity, is holding the summit. Purdue is part of a council-led consortium, the Midwest Project, designed to help small- and medium-sized businesses develop modeling and simulation skills.
Purdue's participants are the Technical Assistance Program (TAP) and ManufacturingHUB.org, powered by the HUBzero platform for scientific collaboration. George Adams of Purdue's Network for Computational Nanotechnology, is director of ManufacturingHUB.org.
During the summit, Adams and Craig Carson, CEO of Jeco Plastics Products in Plainfield, will discuss how Purdue Midwest Project participants were able to help Jeco, a pallet-maker, close a large sale when a last-minute design change was ordered.
"The customer insisted that we make changes to the existing design and tooling that could potentially degrade the strength of the pallet," Carson said. "The time frame was very tight, and the cost of the tool modification exceeded $20,000. By using software and hardware capabilities and Purdue faculty and student expertise in the Midwest Project, we were able to reliably compare the old and new designs to ensure no such degradation would occur."
Thomas Siegmund, a Purdue professor of mechanical engineering, worked with Jeco personnel and guided the use of Midwest Project simulation tools hosted at the Ohio Supercomputer Center to compare the old and new designs.
"Through support of the Midwest Project, we not only avoided a potential $20,000 error, but, more importantly, avoided making an error which would jeopardize the entire program at the final stage," Carson said.
He said that if the final field tests are successful, Jeco is poised to be the sole supplier of the product with potential sales of up to $5 million a year for up to 10 years, requiring 10-20 new employees. The Jeco product will replace a Chinese product based on cost, quality and innovative features.
“Purdue Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) identified Jeco as a candidate for participation in the Midwest Project,” said David McKinnis, director of TAP, of which MEP is a part. “MEP connected them with Purdue faculty and student researchers as well as with the resources of ManufacturingHUB.”
TAP, a partnership among Purdue, the state and local communities, works with companies and health-care providers to improve performance and enhance the quality of life for Indiana residents.
“The combination of a research university such as Purdue, MEP and high-performance computing such as ManufacturingHUB.org is bringing resources for innovation and global competitiveness to smaller manufacturers, such as we see with Jeco Plastics,” Adams said.
Launched at Purdue in 2011 as a solution provider for the Midwest Project, ManufacturingHUB.org offers Web browser-based access to sophisticated simulation programs and high-performance computing for small- to medium-sized manufacturers.
HUBzero is a Web platform that serves up interactive simulation and modeling tools in any Web browser.
Writer: Judith Barra Austin, 765-494-2432,, jbaustin@purdue.edu
Source: George Adams, 765-494-2698, gba@purdue.edu