The "Boss" Kettering Award is GM's highest award for recognizing GM technical inventions and innovations. Its purpose is to honor individuals from every region of the globe whose outstanding inventions and innovations have demonstrated identifiable and substantial benefit to General Motors during the previous year. Awardees join an elite group at GM, becoming part of a tradition of innovation stretching back to GM's earliest days.

The prestigious internal award is named for the legendary Charles F. "Boss" Kettering, who launched GM's Research and Development organization in 1920. A prolific inventor himself, Kettering held more than 140 patents.

Following are descriptions of the innovations and the "Boss" Kettering Award winners for 2004.

AUTO-GENERATION OF ELECTRICAL CONTROLS DESIGN

The GM-EPLAN CAE Tool provides for rapid and accurate generation of controls hardware designs, reducing both design costs and lead times. Based on commercial EPLAN electrical CAE software, GM's customized application uses standard data templates to produce detailed schematics, interconnect diagrams, panel layouts, fluid power circuits and Bills of Material. EPLAN's object-oriented database handles the routine controls design tasks, while GM's innovative eDrawing application and other utilities automatically generate GM standard detail design graphics and reports; significantly reducing effort and improving accuracy of the output.

The Auto-generation of Electrical Controls Design team includes Aaron Dunlap, and Jim Jenkinson both of GM Manufacturing & Labor Relations in Pontiac, Michigan; Dr. Sushil Birla of GM R&D and Strategic Planning in Warren, Michigan; Jerry Cinpinski, Daniel King and James Tucker all of GM Manufacturing & Labor Relations in Warren, Michigan, and Peter Mueller of GM Product Development in Rüsselsheim, Germany.

General Motors, the world's largest automaker, has been the global industry sales leader since 1931. Founded in 1908, GM today employs about 321,000 people around the world. It has manufacturing operations in 32 countries and its vehicles are sold in 200 countries. More information can be found at www.gm.com.

Christine Knapik
Tel: 630-408-3863
E-mail: knapik.c@eplanusa.com