The award for Tire Manufacturing and Design Innovation was won by Leibniz Universität Hannover, for its innovative virtual prototyping system, which, due to its rapid calculations, allows greater engineering and design permutations to be made prior to production.

Collecting the award was Maik Brinkmeier, who stated: “This award is very important because now the research we have been doing for years is recognized by many.

This is especially useful as now commercial companies are interested in our work – soon our research will be more of a reality and will enter industry.”

Other contenders in this category included Cimcorp’s rick-rack palletizing system, which is an innovative storage and order picking system, and Konštrukta-Industry’s spiral-drum cooling device, which features a length of cooling section in a spiral along the circumference of a drum.