Borg-Warner Automotive Honors Nine Employees
30 July 1998
Borg-Warner Automotive Honors Nine Employees With Creativity Awards At Worldwide Leadership Meeting
CHICAGO, July 30 -- Borg-Warner Automotive, Inc.
honored nine employees for their contributions and creativity in the areas of
product development, operations excellence and customer excellence. Each of
the company's four business groups, Air/Fluid Systems, Automatic Transmission
Systems, Morse TEC, and Powertrain Systems, selected employees from various
departments to receive the awards. The honorees were recognized at a dinner
ceremony last night during the company's Worldwide Leadership Meeting in
Muncie, Indiana.
"Finding creative solutions to the challenges of achieving technological
and operations excellence, and establishing and maintaining positive customer
relationships is essential to our powertrain product leadership," said John F.
Fiedler, chairman and chief executive officer of Borg-Warner Automotive, who
presented the awards. "The individuals we are honoring tonight exemplify the
kind of exceptional achievers who are driving our company forward on a daily
basis as we set and meet our goals to outperform our industry."
Four employees were honored for excellence in product development. Paul
McCreary, Automatic Transmission Systems, created a computer model that
predicts clutch-pack life, resulting in multi-million-dollar friction plate
business with Ford. Kevin Todd, Morse TEC, was recognized for modeling
software for engine-timing systems that greatly reduced development costs
through faster time to market. Eric Sandstrom and Gary Holmes, Air/Fluid
Systems, shared an award for the innovative design of the X14F transmission
control module assembly, which reduced package size and cost. As a result,
Borg-Warner Automotive became designated supplier for the X14F CVT program in
Europe.
Doug Fornell, Morse TEC, and Michael Wagner, Automatic Transmission
Systems, received awards for operations excellence. Mr. Fornell developed
alternate alloys for strip stock, resulting in closer-toleranced parts; "fine
finishing" methods for link plates, which significantly increased the speed of
typical Fineblank operation; and heat-treat innovations for joint parts, which
create a super-hard finish layer with a ductile core. Mr. Wagner developed a
third-generation friction material segmenting machine that is faster and
simpler than the previous machine at half the cost.
Customer excellence awards went to three employees. Lou Scarpaci,
Automatic Transmission Systems, identified and secured multi-million-dollar
new friction plate business with General Motors Powertrain Systems. Danny
Fisher, Powertrain Systems, led a team that pursued and secured a multi-
million-dollar joint-development agreement with a major international auto
maker for a leading-edge product for front-wheel-drive applications seeking
the security and responsiveness of all-wheel drive. As resident engineer at
Chrysler during the initial design of the 3.7-liter V6 engine program, Steven
Wilkie, Morse TEC, secured multi-million-dollar new business with that
program.
Chicago-based Borg-Warner Automotive, Inc. is a product leader
in highly engineered components and systems primarily for automotive
drivetrain applications. The company operates manufacturing and technical
support facilities in 12 countries serving the North American, European and
Asian automotive markets.