Issue link: http://www.insightdigital.biz/i/24949
development teams work with suppliers and end users to identify needs and develop solutions. MEGTEC recently partnered with Hewlett-Packard and Green Bay-based EMT International on the development of HP’s line of high-speed digital inkjet web presses. MEGTEC supplies the print dryers to HP’s presses, built at EMT. Ed Schwallie, director of operations and supply chain for Hewlett-Packard, says it was the ability of MEGTEC’s technicians and those at EMT that enabled HP to establish leadership in the digital printing market. “We needed partners who understood the demands of the market and who were able to help us develop solutions quickly,” says Schwallie, who is based in HP’s Corvallis, Ore., headquarters. “We found that flexibility and innovation in these two companies, which just happened to be located in Northeast Wisconsin. MEGTEC’s recent innovations include a thermal oxidizer that controls emissions in the coal mining industry. Tat abatement system earned a Climate Protection Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 2008. Last year, MEGTEC was awarded a contract to build the world’s largest methane abatement system for a coal mine in China’s Chongqing region. Te system is expected to capture 97 percent of the methane from the mine’s exhaust stream and use energy released in the process to heat water for nearby buildings. In many cases, innovation has been a matter of taking an existing MEGTEC technology and converting it to other industrial uses. For example, the company has a long history of providing dryers, coating equipment and emissions-control equipment for the printing industry, but has been able to expand its reach with similar technologies for other industries, such as food processing, automotive, electronics and pharmaceutical. “We call them adjacent markets,” says Uberoi. It was, in fact, a patented air-flotation coating and drying process developed for the printing industry that led MEGTEC to the world of electric and hybrid cars. “Te whole battery business for us really started in 2006 when someone who was familiar with what we did in the printing industry came to us,” says Uberoi. “Tey were looking for a drying and coating process for battery electrodes, similar to what we do in the printing industry with our dryers.” At that time, Tom Dougherty was head of Johnson Controls’ advanced battery development business. Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls had a U.S. 30 | INSIGHT • Februar y 2011 ONLINE: CLICK to see a video of Mohit Uberoi talking about MEGTEC's game-changing entry into the lithium-ion battery business. Department of Energy grant to develop new technology to reduce the cost and improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries for the hybrid and electric vehicle industry. “I was looking all around the world for the technology that would help us to do that,” says Dougherty, “and I wasn’t finding much help anywhere. Ten a colleague at Johnson Controls who had worked in the printing industry told me about this company up in Green Bay that had an air-flotation coating and drying process. It turns out that the answer was right in my back yard.” Dougherty and his team visited MEGTEC and came away impressed with the company’s technical capabilities, as well as with Uberoi’s and his staff’s openness to new ideas. “I’ve never seen such a receptive company in all my life,” says Dougherty, a 37-year veteran at Johnson Controls, who retired in 2008 to head up Monolith Engines, a Waukesha- based firm that is developing energy-efficient engines. “We talked about what was needed and the people at MEGTEC said, ‘We’ll make it happen.’ Tat was always their attitude.” What sold Dougherty – and eventually a lot of others – was the realization that MEGTEC’s air-flotation system would allow both sides of the electrode foil to be coated and dried simultaneously – an immediate time and cost savings over systems that can only coat one side at a time. Just as significant, says Dougherty, is that running the material through the system only once has huge ramifications for quality control and elimination of waste. “Let’s say you run a roll through the process and get a perfect coating on one side,” Dougherty says. “Now you have to rewind the roll and run it through again, and if you have a problem with it this time, you’ve wasted all that material and all the time and expense of the first run. Te savings in terms of increased yield and reduced scrap is potentially enormous.” Dougherty and Uberoi were able to sell the concept to the www. insightonbusiness .com