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The  announces that this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award goes to Greg McCunn, staff engineer for materials at John Deere (Moline, Ill., U.S.). The Division’s executive committee presented the award to him May 20, 2025, during SPE’s Thermoforming Awards Dinner at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia.

McCunn began his career in the plastics industry in 1991 as an injection molder supplier to Jeep, which soon after became part of Chrysler. Over the next 7 years, McCunn was involved in eight Chrysler/Jeep product launches, and the molding facilities expanded from one factory with 29 presses to three factories with 53 presses. 

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In 1997, he moved to John Deere as a quality/manufacturing engineer and joined the styling team “re-skinning” the combine harvester in composites. Later in the buyer role, McCunn learned about purchasing and the company’s plastics suppliers. John Deere does not produce plastics and composite-based products, relying on suppliers. Throughout his career, four of McCunn’s hand-selected suppliers have won John Deere’s Achieve Excellence Annual Supplier Awards.

In 2000, John Deere initiated strategic sourcing to unify the buying communities between John Deere units and simplify the John Deere supply base. In 2002, McCunn joined the strategic sourcing group as a supply base manager for composites. For the next 9 years, he led decision focus efforts and selected sources for composite styling projects throughout John Deere agriculture factories. The mission consisted of pairing the John Deere project engineer with the appropriate material and process for each application. Materials and processes are supplier-specific, so McCunn spent a lot of time on the road visiting potential suppliers and at trade shows learning about processes, suppliers and their capabilities.

In 2011, he joined the polymer materials team with the same mission: to align projects with the correct materials, processes and suppliers. McCunn has presented at SPE Thermoforming Conferences and the SPE Thermoset Conference. He has been a staff engineer for materials at John Deere for the past 13 years.

“Greg has been instrumental in implementing plastic and composites in John Deere products,” says Paul Uphaus, SPE Thermoforming Division chair. “He has been a longtime advocate for the thermoforming industry by using the process in his designs, and for that he has our sincere appreciation.”

THE SPE Thermoforming Division is a technical division of the SPE. Its mission is to facilitate the advancement of thermoforming technologies through education, application, promotion and research.