Cummins Inc. has announced the 2018 winners of the Julius Perr Innovation Award, the highest technical award given by the company.

The award is given annually to employees for their contributions that made significant technological advances benefiting the company.

This year the awards recognised inventors who developed critical inventions necessary to meet growing emissions and on-board diagnostics (OBD) requirements for diesel engines dependably and with optimised customer performance.

“The Cummins brand promise is centred on our ability to deliver both innovation and dependability to our global customers,” said Jennifer Rumsey, vice president and chief technical officer. “At Cummins, each day our teams are working on new technologies that improve product performance for our customers.”

 Lisa Farrell, Kwadwo Owusu, and April Evans are joined by Jennifer Rumsey and members of the Perr family.

 Kwadwo Owusu, April Evans and Lisa Farrell developed a method to reduce solid urea deposit formations in the aftertreatment system by monitoring OBD systems. Solid deposits can be inadvertently formed during the reduction of NOx emissions in the aftertreatment system, and deposit control is critical to the proper function of the diesel emission reduction system. This technology ensures Cummins products remain emissions compliant throughout their useful life. This innovation has been universally used on all SCR catalyst technologies sold by Cummins since 2010. To date, there are over one million units benefiting from this feature.

 Wes Thayer, David Carey, John T. Carroll III, Donald Benson, Michael Tidwell, Richard Reisinger, and Dave Rix are joined by Jennifer Rumsey and members of the Perr family.

Richard Reisinger, Michael Tidwell, Donald Benson, David Carey and John T. Carroll III were honoured for their work that enabled fuel systems to meet OBD regulations and improved emission control and performance. One of the new regulations required the detection of a fuelling error in the fuel system. This team determined that injecting fuel during engine motoring events resulted in a high accuracy of the fuel metering and provided a method of accurately measuring fuel system leakage. This technology is used on Cummins B, G, L and X engines for OBD of the fuel injector quantity.

These projects have had a significant impact on the company, the industry and the environment. This important work exemplifies the spirit of the late Dr Perr, who was responsible for many of the innovations that have made Cummins a leader in diesel technology.

This award was created to honour Perr, who retired from Cummins in 1997 as vice president – fuel systems.  Perr, who died in 2005, joined Cummins in 1958 after fleeing Communist Hungary.  He was named as the inventor or co-inventor of 80 US patents.