About the Speaker

Tim Osswald is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Polymer Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Originally from Cúcuta, Colombia, he received his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the field of Polymer Processing. He spent two and one half years at the Institute for Plastics Processing (IKV) in Aachen, Germany, as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. He received the National Science Foundation's Presidential Young Investigator Award, as well as the 2001 VDI-K Dr--Richard-Escales-Preis. In 2006 he was named an Honorary Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany and in 2011 he was named Honorary Professor at the National University of Colombia. Professor Osswald teaches polymer and polymer composites processing and designing with polymers and polymer composites and researches in the same areas, in particular in the area of fiber orientation, fiber density and fiber length distributions. Professor Osswald has published over 300 papers, the books Materials Science of Polymers for Engineers (Hanser, 1996, 2003, 2012), Polymer Processing Fundamentals (Hanser 1998), Injection Molding Handbook (Hanser, 2001, 2007) Compression Molding (Hanser, 2003), Polymer Processing Modeling and Simulation (Hanser 2006), International Plastics Handbook (Hanser 2006), Plastics Testing and Characterization (Hanser, 2008), Understanding Polymer Processing (2010, 2017), Polymer Rheology (Hanser 2015) and Discontinuous Fiber Reinforced Composites (2020). His books have been translated into Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Russian. Professor Osswald is also the series editor of Plastics Pocket Power (Hanser, 2001), which currently includes 6 books, is the Editor of Polymer Composites, Editor for the Americas of the Journal of Polymer Engineering and the English language Editor for the Journal of Plastics Technology. Professor Osswald serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of several industries, is one of the co-founders of The Madison Group, and is part of a Commission to create a Science Ministry in Colombia.

About the Speaker

Lynzie Nebel is an Upstream Quote Engineer for Cytiva, managing the product costing for custom upstream hardware equipment for bio processing. Throughout her career, Lynzie has gained experience in the automotive, appliance, medical, pet, and micro injection molding industries.

Lynzie received her Bachelor of Science degree in Plastics Engineering Technology from Penn State Behrend in 2008. She has been a member of SPE since 2004 and has been involved in her local section, holding many positions including past President. Lynzie also sits on the Injection Molding Division and is the former secretary for the SPE Foundation board. She is currently the Vice President of Member Engagement on the Executive Board for SPE. In 2015, Lynzie was part of Plastics News' inaugural class of "Women Breaking the Mold," and was named one of the group's "Rising Stars" in 2018. She is also on the Industrial Advisory Board for Penn State's Plastics Department.

About the Speaker

Lynzie Nebel is an Upstream Quote Engineer for Cytiva, managing the product costing for custom upstream hardware equipment for bio processing. Throughout her career, Lynzie has gained experience in the automotive, appliance, medical, pet, and micro injection molding industries.

Lynzie received her Bachelor of Science degree in Plastics Engineering Technology from Penn State Behrend in 2008. She has been a member of SPE since 2004 and has been involved in her local section, holding many positions including past President. Lynzie also sits on the Injection Molding Division and is the former secretary for the SPE Foundation board. She is currently the Vice President of Member Engagement on the Executive Board for SPE. In 2015, Lynzie was part of Plastics News' inaugural class of "Women Breaking the Mold," and was named one of the group's "Rising Stars" in 2018. She is also on the Industrial Advisory Board for Penn State's Plastics Department.

About the Speaker

Lynzie Nebel is an Upstream Quote Engineer for Cytiva, managing the product costing for custom upstream hardware equipment for bio processing. Throughout her career, Lynzie has gained experience in the automotive, appliance, medical, pet, and micro injection molding industries.

Lynzie received her Bachelor of Science degree in Plastics Engineering Technology from Penn State Behrend in 2008. She has been a member of SPE since 2004 and has been involved in her local section, holding many positions including past President. Lynzie also sits on the Injection Molding Division and is the former secretary for the SPE Foundation board. She is currently the Vice President of Member Engagement on the Executive Board for SPE. In 2015, Lynzie was part of Plastics News' inaugural class of "Women Breaking the Mold," and was named one of the group's "Rising Stars" in 2018. She is also on the Industrial Advisory Board for Penn State's Plastics Department.

About the Speaker

Lynzie Nebel is an Upstream Quote Engineer for Cytiva, managing the product costing for custom upstream hardware equipment for bio processing. Throughout her career, Lynzie has gained experience in the automotive, appliance, medical, pet, and micro injection molding industries.

Lynzie received her Bachelor of Science degree in Plastics Engineering Technology from Penn State Behrend in 2008. She has been a member of SPE since 2004 and has been involved in her local section, holding many positions including past President. Lynzie also sits on the Injection Molding Division and is the former secretary for the SPE Foundation board. She is currently the Vice President of Member Engagement on the Executive Board for SPE. In 2015, Lynzie was part of Plastics News' inaugural class of "Women Breaking the Mold," and was named one of the group's "Rising Stars" in 2018. She is also on the Industrial Advisory Board for Penn State's Plastics Department.

About the Speaker

Lynzie Nebel is an Upstream Quote Engineer for Cytiva, managing the product costing for custom upstream hardware equipment for bio processing. Throughout her career, Lynzie has gained experience in the automotive, appliance, medical, pet, and micro injection molding industries.

Lynzie received her Bachelor of Science degree in Plastics Engineering Technology from Penn State Behrend in 2008. She has been a member of SPE since 2004 and has been involved in her local section, holding many positions including past President. Lynzie also sits on the Injection Molding Division and is the former secretary for the SPE Foundation board. She is currently the Vice President of Member Engagement on the Executive Board for SPE. In 2015, Lynzie was part of Plastics News' inaugural class of "Women Breaking the Mold," and was named one of the group's "Rising Stars" in 2018. She is also on the Industrial Advisory Board for Penn State's Plastics Department.

About the Speaker

Lynzie Nebel is an Upstream Quote Engineer for Cytiva, managing the product costing for custom upstream hardware equipment for bio processing. Throughout her career, Lynzie has gained experience in the automotive, appliance, medical, pet, and micro injection molding industries.

Lynzie received her Bachelor of Science degree in Plastics Engineering Technology from Penn State Behrend in 2008. She has been a member of SPE since 2004 and has been involved in her local section, holding many positions including past President. Lynzie also sits on the Injection Molding Division and is the former secretary for the SPE Foundation board. She is currently the Vice President of Member Engagement on the Executive Board for SPE. In 2015, Lynzie was part of Plastics News' inaugural class of "Women Breaking the Mold," and was named one of the group's "Rising Stars" in 2018. She is also on the Industrial Advisory Board for Penn State's Plastics Department.

Summary

TBA

About the Speaker

Amanda Nicholson received her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Akron. She is experienced in educating both industry professionals as well as students on injection molding processing thanks to her work at the Polymers Center of Excellence in Charlotte, NC. It was there that she was able to apply her training from the AIM Institute, Paulson and RJG in the processing of a wide variety of experimental thermoplastic resins.  In addition to hands-on injection molding experience, Amanda has the expertise needed to perform accurate molding simulations to support customers in the development of a tool or optimizing processing conditions. These types of simulations are critical to a cost and time effective product launch. Amanda is currently a Senior Project Engineer, CAE/Simulation with The Madison Group where she uses MoldFlow to help customers turn their design vision into a manufacturable product.

Summary

TBA

About the Speaker

Brad Johnson has been teaching at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College's plastics engineering technology program since 1994. Prior to joining Penn State, he accumulated over ten years of industrial experience and served in various roles in the plastics industry: manufacturing engineer, manufacturing supervisor, design engineer, and program manager. His primary expertise is in injection molding and process optimization. Along with developing some of the processing classes, he has also taught plastic materials, mold design, rheology, and quality control classes. Brad also directs the Plastics Training Academy (PTA) at Penn State, which offers short non-credit classes on plastics-related topics. He has taught many short classes on injection molding for the PTA, both at Penn State and on-site. He also organizes and chairs the Innovation and Emerging Plastic Technologies conferences that are held in Erie. Brad holds bachelor's and master's degrees in chemical engineering from Virginia Tech. He is also an active member and a past chair of SPE’s Injection Molding Division.

About the Speaker

Jennifer Schmidt is the Senior Moldflow Instructor at the American Injection Molding (AIM) Institute, with over twenty years of plastics industry experience: more than ten years of hot runner experience and fifteen plus years of Moldflow® experience. She is a Moldflow® Certified Expert and GM Approved Moldflow® Analyst.

She has spent more than two thirds of her career as a Moldflow consultant, helping companies solve complex problems and improve their parts and processes. She previously worked as a Design Engineer for Beaumont Technologies performing simulation projects. Prior to Beaumont, Jennifer worked in the Hot Runner industry as an Application Engineer, and later a Flow Simulation Specialist using both Moldflow® and SigmaSoft® software.

Summary

Companies are facing ever mounting pressures from customers, employees, investors and legislation to become more sustainable. However, the path to adopting sustainable practices can be costly and difficult for organizations, but it does not have to be this way. In this presentation, we will review how companies today are using simulation workflows to not only meet sustainability goals, such as carbon footprint reduction, energy and waste minimization, but are also saving money and time by incorporating sustainable decisions throughout their product development and manufacturing processes.

About the Speaker

Matt Jaworski is a Senior Subject Matter Expert for Autodesk’s Moldflow Simulation Team. He has over 25 years’ experience in the injection molding CAE simulation field working for such companies as Hewlett Packard, Rubbermaid and Moldflow/Autodesk. He has dual BS degrees in Mechanical and Plastics Engineering Technology from Penn State, and MS, PhD degrees in Plastics Engineering from UMass Lowell. He is a member of the Society of Plastics Engineers and the American Society for Engineering Education. Matt is also active in education and has taught at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and Penn State Erie as an adjunct professor.

About the Speaker

Davide Masato received BS Mechanical Engineering (2011), MS Mechanical Engineering (2014), and Ph.D. (2018) from the University of Padova in Italy. In 2016 he was a visiting researcher at the University of Bradford (UK), where he worked at the Centre for Polymer Micro and Nano Technology (Polymer MNT). Before joining the faculty at UMass Lowell, he was a post-doc researcher at the University of Padova, where he worked at the Te.Si. Laboratory for Precision Engineering and Manufacturing. Since 2018, Dr. Masato has been an Assistant Professor in the Department of Plastics Engineering at UMass Lowell. His research focuses on plastic product design, polymer processing technologies, sustainable manufacturing, and computer-aided engineering. His research is funded by NASA, US ARMY, REMADE (Department of Energy), and private companies. Dr. Masato teaches undergraduate and graduate engineering design, injection mold design, and computer-aided engineering classes. Dr. Masato's research work resulted in 30+ journal publications, 40+ conference presentations, 1 book chapter, and 3 patents.

Summary

The designer is like the quarterback in American Football.

The quarterback is…

• Responsible for the outcome of each individual play
• Ultimate outcome of the game

Even the strongest offence and defense team members cannot make up for the deficiency in the initial play such as throwing an interception.

Similarly, the designer…

Basic design related failures are often misclassified as material, tooling, processing or even customer abuse issues.

Several real examples will be shown to demonstrate the above.

About the Speaker

Vikram Bhargava is a Fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers and Past Chairman of its Product Design and Development Division. He retired as the Director of Mechanical Engineering Services at Motorola Solutions in Holtsville, NY heading an international group of professionals. He has over 40 years of experience in product design, development, manufacturing, and management, especially in plastics.

He continues to be an active consultant and trainer in his retirement.

He is a sought-after trainer and has trained thousands of engineers and suppliers in the proper design and manufacturing of plastic parts and assemblies in the US, China, Canada, Taiwan, and India including companies like Google, Nvidia, Motorola and Foxconn.

He is the author of a book on Holistic Product Design published recently by Hanser Publishers, Germany.

He holds 21 US and International patents.

He has successfully led many Six Sigma projects and is a certified Motorola Six Sigma Black Belt and trainer.

Vikram has successfully led various cross functional teams in the US and international supplier selection, continuous improvement, and training.

He has a BSME from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India.

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/bhargavavik/
Website: vikpedia.org/

About the Speaker

Chris Myers, Applications Engineer with Beaumont, has almost 30 years of experience in the plastics injection molding industry. He graduated from the Plastics Engineering program at Penn State Behrend in 1994 from which he started his career as a Product Engineer with Little Tikes. From there he has held various roles in part design, mold design and processing in not only injection molding but also rotomolding.

Summary

Once thought of as a good way to help reduce part cost, plastics are now being utilized in performance-critical applications. Often times in these applications designers and molders will turn to fiber reinforced thermoplastics to help them achieve the desire performance of their end product. However, because of a lack of knowledge of the importance of manufacturing in achieving these properties designers and OEM’s find it difficult to realize the potential of these materials. This uncertainty leads to over designed parts, or the purchase of more expensive resins that allow the manufacturing oversights to be overcome.

About the Speaker

Erik Foltz is a Senior Managing Engineer at The Madison Group, an independent plastics consulting firm located in Madison, WI. At The Madison Group, Erik assists designers, engineers, and molders with optimizing their plastic part design for manufacturability and performance. Taking a holistic approach, Foltz helps his customers understand where the practical limitations of their material, design, or manufacturing method exist. Using both simulation and functional prototypes, he has helped customers during all the phases of product development and performance validation. Foltz, is an active member for both the Product Design and Development Division (PD3) and Injection Molding Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers.