Judging Criteria

Judges will evaluate and score candidates in each category using the following criteria:

Project Categories

  • Process Impact: Did the project transform a key process or processes that resulted in greater efficiency, speed, cost effectiveness, or an entirely new dimension of value for the company?
  • Business Impact: Did the project aid in the company’s growth financially, in market share, in reputation, or in customer satisfaction?
  • Strategic Impact: Did the project help enable and advance the company’s long-term business goals, further its digital transformation, and/or expand its future growth opportunities?
  • Use of Technology: To what extent was the use of advanced technology key to enabling the project?
  • Scale of project: Did the project encompass or hold the potential to encompass a significant percentage of the company’s operational footprint?

Digital Transformation Leadership Category (Individual)

  • Company Impact: Did the individual’s achievement significantly advance his or her company’s operational digital transformation?
  • Industry Impact: Did or should the individual’s achievement serve as a model for other manufacturing leaders?
  • Manufacturing Impact: Did or should the individual’s achievement serve as a model for how to conduct manufacturing operations at other companies?

Next-Generation Leadership Category (Individual)

  • Disruptive Innovation Impact: Did the individual successfully promote ideas and lead projects that embodied new ways of thinking?
  • Collaborative Innovation Impact: Did the individual inspire others and play a significant role in creating new or unique organizational models, including cross-functional teams, that took a collaborative approach to solving problems or creating new ways of doing things?
  • Social Impact: Did the individual enhance the perception of manufacturing’s value for other potential next-generation leaders?