Cummins Employees Receive Prestigious Dr. Julius P. Perr Innovation Award

The highest technical award bestowed by the Company, the Julius Perr Innovation Award is presented annually to employees for their contributions that made significant technological advances benefiting Cummins. The 2016 recipients, who are scientists and engineers who developed critical advances in filtration and aftertreatment, received their awards during an awards dinner held at the Irwin Conference Center in Columbus. The awards were presented in conjunction with the Global Technical Leaders conference.

The winning projects, all protected by U.S. Patents, and related foreign patents, have had a significant impact on the Company, the industry and the environment.

“In the spirit of Dr. Perr’s rich legacy, these inventors have demonstrated that the Cummins commitment to innovation and technology leadership continues to grow through our development of products that help enable our customers’ success,” said Jennifer Rumsey, Vice President and Chief Technical Officer. “Our ability to develop differentiated products, information and technologies to meet future challenges will continue to set us apart from the competition.”

Beginning in 2007, diesel particulate filter exhaust aftertreament was required in order to meet United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2007 emission requirements. Due to the need to clean the particulate filters from ash and other contaminants during their life, serviceability of these systems is necessary. Cummins engineers Patrick Klein, Jeff Sedlacek and David M. Grimm developed a compact, serviceable aftertreatment system that limited the impact of these joints on the overall length of the aftertreatment system. This enabled packaging of the particulate filter in key OEM applications in the United States in 2007 and is also a design enabler of the Global Single Module Next Generation Aftertreatment Platform, which Cummins is launching in 2017.

Cummins engineers Stephanie (Faber) Severance, Brad Smith, Brian Schwandt, Chris Holm, Gerard Malgorn and Peter Herman developed a variable impactor that provided a solution to customers needing service-free crankcase emissions technology. This flexible, scalable variable impaction method efficiently removes PM from engine blow-by gases across a wide range of engine operating conditions. The product lasts the entire life of the engine with no service, and assisted Cummins generator in meeting EPA emissions regulations.

This invention allowed Cummins generator to offer a product with high performance, low-cost, service-free filtration, compact packaging, and high reliability and replaced more expensive serviceable technology, which was larger in size and higher in cost. This invention has been applied to a variety of engine platforms from the ISF2.8 to the QSK95.