The winners have been chosen

This marks the fourth time that Messe München has presented the productronica Innovation Award in cooperation with Hüthig Verlag. Now, as is tradition on the first day of the world’s leading trade fair for electronics development and production, the winners—previously selected by the independent jury from 60 entries in six categories—have been announced.

For Dr. Reinhard Pfeiffer, Deputy Chairman of the Board of Messe München, the Innovation Award has a special significance this year: “Despite the difficult last few months, the number of submissions, and especially the quality of the products submitted, clearly show that the industry has lost none of its innovative power. On the contrary: companies want to move forward, gather together and look ahead. To do that, this award and, of course, productronica are the ideal platform.”

“Cables, Coils & Hybrids” cluster winner: Schleuniger AG

Dr. Frank Breme, Head of Business Segment Solutions & Software, Schleuniger: “We are proud that our automation platform has won this year’s Innovation Award. In our opinion, the decisive factor was definitely the high cable quality with optimum output. In addition, the automation platform is very flexible: It processes different cable types and adapts to different automation levels in the product life cycle. With this innovation, we are confident that customer needs in the field of the e-mobility megatrend are fully covered.”

“Future Markets” cluster winner: Koh Young Europe GmbH

Harald Eppinger, General Manager, Koh Young: “It is a great honor for us to receive the productronica future award. With the Neptune, Koh Young has once again succeeded in setting new standards in quality assurance. Coating inspection is a long-established field, but now the Neptune series makes it possible to realize extensive 3D measurements within the usual cycle times. This is becoming more important, especially with miniaturization making its way into the EV sector, to ensure long life in extreme environments. Koh Young Technology has repeatedly managed to present a disruptive technology that revolutionizes the market and the application.”

“Inspection & Quality” cluster winner: Alfamation S.p.A.

Mauro Arigossi, CEO, Alfamation: “We saw the need to develop a durable and compact modular format to integrate several specific test and measurement functions that normally do not comply with any industry standard. Flexmedia XM was designed to be inherently scalable, operating system independent and POE-based, which make it simple and cost-effective. We are very proud and honored to accept the 2021 Innovation Award as it validates Alfamation’s innovative out-of-the-box approach to developing test products and systems for production test, service, V&V and R&D for the automotive, consumer electronics, optics and semiconductor industries.”

“PCB & EMS” cluster winner: IO Tech

Hervé Javice, Co-Founder & CEO, IO Tech: “We are delighted that our unique and groundbreaking multi-material additive manufacturing technology has been globally recognized by the team of experts at productronica. IO Tech’s proprietary Continuous Laser Assisted Deposition (C.L.A.D.) is the world’s first technology that can process virtually any industry-certified material at high resolution and high speed, enabling digital manufacturing at industrial scale. Our technology will shape the future of mass electronic manufacturing, and we can’t wait to share its many possibilities with visitors to productronica and beyond.”

“Semiconductor” cluster winner: AP&S International GmbH

Tobias Bausch, CMO & CTO, AP&S International: “It was essential that we include the following features during product development: We wanted to develop a cleaner based on the latest technical standard, which enables both manual and automatic loading and increases the capacity of our existing cleaners. With our new CleanSurF®, we have achieved our goal—to realize a system with efficient throughput and attractive TCO.”

“SMT” cluster winner: SMT Maschinen- und Vertriebs GmbH & Co. KG

Christian Ulzhöfer, member of management, SMT Maschinen Vertriebs GmbH & Co. KG: “We are motivated to develop and build reflow systems so that we can offer the customer the simplest solution. During development of the new generation of reflow systems, we paid special attention to reducing the effort for our customers as much as possible in maintenance, in service life and in profile creation and profile changeover times. In doing so, the value added we create lies in systems that produce for a maximum period after one-time temperature profiling and carry out product changes as quickly as possible. Tedious product profiling work can thus be minimized, since only one temperature profile is ever assumed and only the fan speeds are changed. Profile changeover times are reduced to a minimum of just a few seconds. I am delighted that with “Profiling Plus”, we can not only offer our customers real added value, but also win over the jury at one of the most important awards in the industry. The award is a great validation of our work.”

The judging of the individual submissions for this first independent award in the electronics manufacturing industry was carried out by a six-member jury. Its members are:

• PCB & EMS cluster: Dr. Andrej Novikov (University of Rostock)
• SMT Cluster: Dr. Maik Hampicke (Fraunhofer IZM)
• Inspection & Quality Cluster: Dr. Martin Oppermann (TU Dresden)
• Semiconductor cluster: Prof. Dr. Lothar Pfitzner (University of Erlangen)
• Cables, Coils & Hybrids Cluster: Christoph Stoppok (ZVEI)
• Future Market Cluster: Dr. Sandra Engle (VDMA)