Dana Corp. goes looking for inventors
DETROIT (AP) — Tom Redmond has plenty of ideas about how to make things better. Now one of them might actually come to fruition.
The Franklin, Tenn., man owns a land surveying company. He heard auto parts giant Dana Corp. was asking people to submit their inventions for review — and he had one. Even though the company had only asked for people in the Detroit area, he submitted his invention anyway.
Redmond is one of three men whose inventions are being considered by the Toledo, Ohio-based company for use in cars.
“I’m excited and I’m humbled and honored,” Redmond said.
But don’t ask Redmond, 39, to tell you his idea. It’s secret. He won’t even tell you how he came up with it, other than to say he saw something happen that he thought he could prevent.
The other two finalists, who live in suburban Detroit, refused to be interviewed at all.
Barry Lloyd, the senior technology planner for Dana who reviews invention ideas, said the inventors are protective and the company respects that.
Lloyd, who works at Dana’s Ottawa Lake research facility, said the company put out the call for inventions in Detroit as a way to honor the company’s heritage as part of its 100th anniversary celebration.
In 1904, Clarence Spicer, who invented the Universal Joint system that uses a drive shaft to send power from the engine to the wheels, created the company with the help of financier Charles Dana.
Dana advertised this year’s call for investors with only two smallish newspaper ads in Detroit. In just a few weeks, Dana got more than 50 invention submissions through its Web site.
The ad promised that the finalists would get an audience with top company executives to show off the innovation.
Some ideas were whimsical or didn’t fit with the “under the hood” type innovations Dana was looking for. But some struck the reviewers as pretty clever.
“It’s quite enjoyable because you get a huge diverse selection and a lot of times they are entertaining … sometimes they are very thought provoking,” said Jay Klinko, a technology innovator for Dana who reviewed the submissions. “You filter through a lot to get to the real good ones.”
Reviewers picked the finalists, who then gave their pitch to company executives, including Lloyd and Klinko, at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress in Detroit on March 8.
Redmond drove from his suburban Nashville home to present his “widget,” turned around and drove home. He was afraid to fly because he wasn’t sure how to explain his device to airport security.
The three ideas that made it will now be vetted by engineers.
Engineers will study whether the ideas are practical to build and incorporate into new cars. If they work, the inventors will be paid by the company.
Although the recent event was the first time the company had made a public call for inventions, Dana put a link on its Web page about eight months ago dedicated to inventors.
That has reaped more than 100 submissions, including two ideas that are in the business plan stage — further along than the most recent inventions.
Lloyd said he has yet to see an idea that “made him get out of his chair and go running down the halls.”
Getting ideas from inventors isn’t new. He said for the last 20 years he’s been there, about 20 trickled in through the mail every year. None of those inventions ever made it as far as the ones that have come in the past eight months.
Dana has about 45,000 employees and annual sales of $7.9 billion.
———
On the Net:
Dana Corp.: http://www.dana.com