Top Plant, Product of the Year entry applications on Website

By Plant Engineering Staff July 14, 2006

Fewer than two months remain before nominations close for PLANT ENGINEERING ’s two programs honoring the best in manufacturing.

Application forms for the 19thannual Product of the Year competition and the third annual Top Plant award are now available online at www.plantengineering.com . Also available on the home page are stories about Hewlett Packard and S&C Electric, winners of the 2004 Top Plant award, as well as DaimlerChrysler, the 2005 winner. Also featured on the Website are all Product of the Year winners from the past two years.

Receiving these awards meant a lot to the 2005 recipients.

“We are delighted and honored to receive this Grand Award for Product of the Year 2005,” said New Standard president Michael Brown at this year’s award gala. “ PLANT ENGINEERING magazine is the premier publication. Industrial and facility managers find it to be invaluable, as does anyone that reads the magazine.”

“Despite all the recent good news, we realize that the competition out there is as strong as ever,” said DaimlerChrysler plant manager Kurt Kavajecz in accepting the Top Plant award. “And we know that we will have to continue to do those things that helped to make us a PLANT ENGINEERING Top Plant award winner.”

When the 2006 Product of the Year nominees appear in the November issue of PLANT ENGINEERING , they will include two additional categories. The Material Handling category was expanded to include both Material Handling Systems and Manual Material Handling, and the Software category has been split into the Maintenance Software and Productivity Software groups.

“The expanded categories reflect changes in the industry. This also gives us a better chance to honor more of the best innovations in plant floor products,” said PLANT ENGINEERING editor Bob Vavra.

Entry deadline for the 2006 Product of the Year competition is Sept. 8, 2006. All entries will be juried, and the 150 finalists will be presented to PLANT ENGINEERING ’s readers for their consideration. The three products in each category that receive the most reader votes will get the gold, silver and bronze trophies, and the single largest vote-getter from all products receives the Grand Award.

The Top Plant entry deadline is Sept. 1. All entrants will receive benchmarking information from all applications received, and the winner or winners will be featured in the December 2006 issue of PLANT ENGINEERING .