I’m excited to reveal some big news for NED.
It is my pleasure to announce that our award program, The NED Innovation Awards, is back and better than ever!
Our last run of the NED Innovation Awards was in 2019, and we were getting all set to ramp up for 2020 when....well, you know what happened.
Every issue of New Equipment Digest, we scour our resources and contacts to bring you the latest and greatest pieces of industrial equipment on the market. Most of these finds are exactly that: fantastic new machines, software systems or tools designed to make your work a little easier.
Generally, these innovations add to the suppliers' long lineups of other fantastic devices that have been steadily improving, upgrading, and redesigning for years to fit your changing needs.
But some of these products fall into a different category as well.
A few times a year, a company is able to break out of the box, to push their designs and their equipment beyond the scope of anything before it.
The aim of these products is to fundamentally change the nature of the tool. They go beyond the known to tackle new functionality and new power, the likes of which the market has never seen before.
These products open the door for innovation across the sector; they unlock new productivity and serve their users differently than any other device before it. This, in any industry, is a rare offering, and one that requires a tremendous amount of resources, R&D, and top-to-bottom company backing to bring to market.
Innovation is as much an act of inspiration as it is bravery. Making an existing piece of equipment better is a safe and profitable bet. Doing something different is a gamble.
So we at New Equipment Digest have decided to relaunch the award program designed to celebrate those efforts.
The awards celebrate the most disruptive innovations in industrial technology, tools, and equipment. We are looking for the most innovative products that offer new capabilities and new levels of efficiency or harness the latest technologies to empower manufacturers to work faster, better, and more cost-effectively than ever before.
And just like anything we do, we want you to be involved. But this year is a little different than years past.
Instead of scouring our own pages to find what we believe are the most innovative products and presenting them to you for a vote, we have decided to leave it in your hands: the manufacturers, the engineers, the innovators. After all, you're the ones who know the ins and outs of your product creation and development and the amount of time and resources needed to bring it to fruition.
So we are asking you to submit what you believe and know to be a truly innovative product, piece of equipment or technology. These entries run the gamut of industrial equipment—everything from hand tools to software. The only related factor is that they somehow change the status quo of their industry.
Submissions are now open and will close on August 31, 2022. Then, we will present all of the entries to you, the readers, to vote on what you feel is the most innovative and worthy of celebrating.
This is not a ranking of the best products. It’s not a ranking of the best in any particular industry. It’s your choice of what you see as the most disruptive products that have been released to the market this year—actually, we extended it a bit to include any product released to the market since January 1, 2020.
Once the votes are tallied, we will announce the winners in our November/December issue of New Equipment Digest.
If you would like to submit a product for consideration or know of a company that should, you can use this link to start the process and find out all you need to know: NED Innovation Awards: Call for Entries
Good luck to the applicants and the innovators!
If you're unsure if your product fits the bill to be entered, take a look at the finalists and winners from years past:
2017 NED Innovation Award Winners
2018 NED Innovation Award Finalists