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Winkle, Delphi See Benefits from YSU Collaborations
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio –When Rick Teaberry welcomed representatives of Power Plaza Co. Ltd. to tour his family-owned Winkle Electric Co., his turn as an ambassador for the Mahoning Valley business community came with the potential for future business with the Korean company.
“We could do a little bit of manufacturing for them and package some of the components they manufacture into a final assembly,” Teaberry said Friday at Youngstown State University where a memorandum of understanding was signed for YSU’s Research Foundation and Power Plaza Co. to collaborate on the development of electric vehicle technologies.
“I find it very interesting that our local university is now internationally connected to a company that’s working on cutting edge technologies for the electric vehicle industry and I think it will get some results,” Teaberry said. “It’s very exciting.”
Winkle Electric, an electrical supplier founded in 1944, today operates offices in Erie, Seneca and Meadville, Pa., in addition to its Youngstown headquarters.
Power Plaza, established in 1993, is attempting to become a “world leader in the delivery of innovative switching mode power supplies for industrial, telecommunications and other purposes [and is] constantly developing many new units in our own lab,” states its website.
YSU will provide laboratory space and equipment for an engineer from Power Plaza to perform the company’s research here, which will give electrical engineering students projects to work on that “create a better integration of what they’re trying to achieve and what our students and faculty are trying to achieve,” said Martin Abraham, dean of YSU’s STEM College.
For example, he explained, “One of the challenges with electric vehicles is there are multiple batteries so as they discharge, you have to maintain the voltage so all of the electronic systems operate properly. This is one of the critical technologies that needs to be developed and improved for electric vehicle systems.”
The memorandum of understanding is the YSU Research Foundation's first arrangement with the STEM College, and the university’s first with an international company. “We have created an opportunity through the STEM College for other companies to come in, work with our students and use our equipment but we haven’t had any takers on that yet,” Abraham said.
Details of the collaboration, including its financial arrangements and YSU students’ travel to Power Plaza’s headquarters in South Korea, will be worked out in the next few months, officials said.
“We want to extend our capabilities for globalization,” said Key Hwang, who represented Power Plaza at the signing ceremony. “We are always looking for partners outside Korea, not just in the United States but in Japan and other countries,” he said.
Korean executives and engineers spent last week in the Mahoning Valley, and visited “several companies in the automotive and electrical supply chains,” said Eric Planey, the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber’s vice president for international business attraction. Among their stops was Delphi’s hybrid electric vehicle research and development center in Champion.
“Delphi wants to incubate and see the fostering of other companies” in the electric vehicle supply chain,” Planey said. “Because electric vehicles have a lot more electrical wiring than conventional vehicles, it benefits Delphi.”
Power Plaza’s Hwang said his company also may initiate research collaborations with the University of Akron, which the company visited while attending YSU’s Sustainable Energy Forum earlier this year. That trip was arranged by the TechBelt Energy Innovation Center, based in Warren.
Planey said he first met Power Plaza representatives while attending a trade show in Korea in February, a trip partially sponsored by the Korean trade agency KOTRA. “The research and development of today is the potential job creation of tomorrow, and the Valley is positioning itself to be a leader in next generation automotive technologies,” he observed.
Copyright 2012 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.