Automotive
The 17th annual SPE TPO Automotive Engineered Polyolefins Conference will be dominated by the subject of metal replacement technologies and lightweighting.
The Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE) has revealed its five keynote speakers for 'the world's leading' automotive engineered polyolefins forum, with presentations being delivered by top brass from Ford Motor Co., the Auto Harvest Foundation, Sumika Polymers North America, Asahi Kasei Plastics North America and General Motors Co.
Over two-and-a-half days, the keynote speakers will highlight the most important issues facing the automotive market with regard to plastics, including customer wants and needs, future automotive trends, the global outlook for automotive polyolefins, oil and shale gas and their impact on vehicle lightweighting, and the evolution of TPO material performance.
Organised by the Detroit Section of the SPE, the 2015 technical conference and exhibition returns to the Troy Marriott in the Detroit suburbs from October 4th-7th 2015.
Director of Vehicle and Enterprise Sciences at Ford Michael Whitens - who will deliver the opening keynote address on the topic, TPO: A Customer’s Perspective said: "We automakers live in a rapidly changing world where we're under relentless pressure to lower CO2 emissions, reduce vehicle weight, increase safety and fuel efficiency, and of course continually add new technology while maintaining or lowering the cost of our vehicles.
"That's a very challenging set of deliverables for this whole industry. In my talk I'll discuss what a customer, namely Ford Motor Co., wants and needs with regard to thermoplastic polyolefins (TPOs). I'll cover some key improvements that have boosted performance and lowered cost over the past few decades, then describe areas where we'd like to see these materials improve as we move forward. If the TPO community can do this, it'll create the window of opportunity for TPOs to displace more costly materials."
Dr David Cole, Chair of the Auto Harvest Foundation, will follow Whitens with his presentation 'The auto future: Fast, furious and exciting'.
"The auto industry has gone through an amazing transformation in the past few years," he said. "Through capacity reduction, restructured labor contracts, financial restructuring, staff reductions, new technological tools, global scale, and more, the US auto industry’s break-even has been significantly reduced. The domestic manufacturers, in particular, have become far more competitive as they have moved from a cost disadvantage to cost parity with many of their international competitors.
"We're at the edge of a revolution in both product and process technologies. New production facilities are both lean and agile with advanced software control everywhere ... New material systems are being developed that feature significant advances in both materials and their manufacturing processes. And the connected vehicle is becoming a reality that will yield enormous benefits, particularly in safety. All in all, the modern auto industry is on the move and the process of change is accelerating."
On the second day of the conference, Sumika Polymers North America President Brian K Weider will lead with a keynote on the topic of 'Global outlook for the polyolefin and automotive business'.
"I'll start off by discussing long-term trends affecting polypropylene, polyethylene, and the elastomers supply base," said Weider. "Then I'll look at current trends in the automotive industry for TPOs and TPEs. Finally I'll discuss some future trends we anticipate that will affect the entire global automotive resin market."
President and COO of Asahi Kasei Plastics North America John Moyer will follow Weider onto the stage with his speech 'Oil, shale gas, fuel efficiency, lightweighting and other funny things that happened on the way to the TPO forum' adding a little levity to proceedings.
"I expect that there will be more changes between now and October of this year," Moyer
remarked.
On Wednesday, the conference's third day, the event will begin with a keynote from Matt Carroll, Engineering Group Manager at General Motors Co., who will discuss 'The evolution of TPO material performance'.
"The performance of thermoplastic polyolefins for both interior and exterior components has been scrutinised and steadily improved over the past 20 years," said Carroll. "Besides the all-important dimensional stability of parts, material properties like UV stability, oxidative stability, impact resistance, scratch and mar resistance, stiffness for handling, and paintability are all keys to producing successful parts. In several cases, the property needs are in conflict and a 'balancing act' is required to optimise part performance. In this talk, I'll review improvements in
the performance of TPO over time and provide some personal thoughts about future usage and growth of this class of polymer in the automotive industry."
About the TPO Conference
Since 1998, the SPE TPO Automotive Engineered Polyolefins Conference has highlighted the importance of rigid and flexible polyolefins throughout the automobile – in applications ranging from semi-structural composite underbody shields and front-end modules to soft-touch interior skins and bumper fascia.
Engineered polyolefins have been the fastest-growing segment of the global plastics industry for more than a decade owing to their excellent cost / performance ratio. The show typically draws more than 700 attendees from 20 countries on four continents who are interested in learning about the latest in rigid and elastomeric TPO as well as TPE and TPV technologies. Fully a third of conference attendees say they work for a transportation OEM, and roughly 20 per cent work for a tier integrator/moulder, with the balance from materials or reinforcement suppliers, equipment OEMs, industry consultants, and members of academia. A variety of sponsorship packages are available for companies interested in showcasing their products and/or services. The show is organised by volunteers from the Detroit Section of the SPE.
