Jury Named for Medical Design AwardsMPMN publisher, Canon Communications (Santa Monica, CA), announced the jury for the 1999 Medical Design Excellence Awards. The eight-member panel will select the winning products for the annual medical product design and engineering competition.The members of the 1999 jury are Kent Ritzel, Metaphase Design Group (St. Louis, MO); Christoph Böninger, Siemens Design & Messe GmbH (Munich, Germany); Michael Wiklund, American Institutes for Research (Concord, MA); Betsy Goodrich, Manta Product Development (Cambridge, MA); Sohrab Vossoughi, Ziba Design (Portland, OR); Bob Hall, GVO (Palo Alto, CA); Matt Duncan, Morphix Design, Newport Beach, CA); and John Gosbee, MD, Center for Applied Medical Informatics, Michigan State University Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies (Kalamazoo, MI).Products must be commercially available by the deadline date of February 8, 1999 in order to be eligible. Competition rules and entry forms are available through the 24-hour fax-on-demand line at 800/588-8527, by visiting www.devicelink.com/awards, or by calling Canon Communications at 310/392-5509.Return to the MPMN home pageBayer Expands with New Texas FacilityGrowth includes $80 million capacity increaseAs part of a plan to invest $9 billion in its U.S. operations by the year 2000, Bayer Corp. is opening a new facility at its Baytown, TX, site to strengthen its plastics and polyurethanes business. The new construction includes a $140 million MDI (diphenylmethane diisocyanate) plant and an $80 million expansion to increase the firm's polycarbonate capacity. The increase in polycarbonate will include both lipid-resistant and non-lipid-resistant grades, and will improve U.S. manufacturers' access to the materials. Recent investments at the Baytown site include $500 million for infrastructure and other raw materials facilities for the manufacture of isocyanates, $150 million for a bisphenol A plant, and $140 million for dinitrotoluene and toluene diamine expansion.Return to the MPMN home pageAAMI Issues EtO GuidancesDocuments assist with sterilization proceduresTwo new guidances for manufacturers using the ANSI/AAMI/ISO 11135 or 10993-7 standards are available from the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI). TIR 15, "EtO Sterilization Equipment/Process Consideration," includes guidance on determining minimum product load temperature before preconditioning and on calculating relative humidity and EtO concentration in the load or sterilization chamber. TIR 19, "Guidance for 10993-7," includes a two-page flowchart illustrating decision points in the standard and the alternatives that are available at each point. Both guidances are available as individual documents and will appear together in AAMI's updated collection of 16 standards and reports, Sterilization, Part 3: Industrial Process Control. For information, call AAMI at 800/332-2264.Return to the MPMN home pageBusiness NewsControl products and systems company Spectrum Control Inc. (Erie, PA) has acquired most of the assets of Republic Electronics Corp., a maker of ceramic capacitors. Wire and cable manufacturer Tensolite Co. (St. Augustine, FL) has renamed VEMCO, a cable assembly company it recently acquired, Tensolite Interconnect Systems (Williston, VT). Plastic Molding Technology (Seymour, CT) has formed a joint venture company, Esoplast sro, with ESOX, (Bratislava, Slovakia) to provide insert- and injection-molded components. DDL Electronics Inc. (Newbury Park, CA) has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary SMTEK Corp. has signed a long-term partnership agreement with Haas Automation Inc. (Oxnard, CA) for the manufacture of custom electronic assemblies. Bonding equipment manufacturer Palomar Technologies (Vista, CA) has acquired Toddco General Inc. (Poway, CA). Toddco will combine with Palomar's welder product line group to form a new entity, MicroJoin Inc., which will be located at Toddco's former headquarters. ITW Electronic Component Packaging Systems (Arlington, TX) has acquired CariTech Inc. (Hudson, WI), a manufacturer of carrier tape products for the integrated circuit device market. Kalle Pentaplast GmbH (Montabaur, Germany) is expanding its product line to include rigid films based on COC raw materials. The films will be marketed by Ticona GmbH (Frankfurt, Germany) under the name Topas. Cincinnati Milacron (Batavia, OH) has signed a definitive agreement to buy Johnson Controls' plastics machinery division (Manchester, MI) for approximately $210 million. Accu-Sort Systems (Telford, PA) has acquired Visolux Accu-Sort (Stahnsdorf, Germany) to form Accu-Sort/Europe GmbH (ASE) to serve the European market for automatic identification systems.Return to the MPMN home page