Review 2020/21

The Corona pandemic has led to many changes and delays within the last two years. Therefore, also affected was the annual Magna Powertrain Supplier Innovation Challenge 2020 and moreover it’s final event – the Supplier Innovation Day. Usually, it is hold in our Engineering Center in St. Valentin as a face-to-face event with fair character, evening ceremony and dinner. Due to lock-downs and travel restrictions in 2020 and 2021 the closing event of the challenge 2020 was finally hold as an Online Event on October 14th 2021 – the first Virtual Supplier Innovation Day.

Steven Rush (Vice President Purchasing MPT) opened the virtual event officially and welcomed all participants. The companies of the top 9 submissions of the Supplier Innovation Challenge (see figure 1) were invited to the final conference and used their chance to present their prospective ideas and concepts in the field of E-Motor, Inverter and Transmission within 30min each to our online crowd. More than 70 participants from different Magna Powertrain locations and departments listened to the informative talks, asked their questions, and encouraged discussions with the experts from the supplier side.

In the afternoon Tom Rucker (President MPT) was giving his acknowledgement before Steffen Wonder (Senior Director Corporate Engineering & R&D, Magna International; Senior Director, Powertrain Concepts, MPT) spoke about ‘Future Mobility’.

Last but not least, the highlight of the virtual meeting - the announcement of the winners of the Supplier Innovation Challenge 2020/2021 - took place. Our Magna Powertrain Building Block Lead for the respective category was revealing the winner:

Figure 1: Nine Finalists of the Supplier Innovation Challenge 2020