Zonar Systems honored for ridership tracking system

SEATTLE — Zonar Systems' ZPass solution won in the Innovative Services for Health, Wellness and Safety category at the 2011 Edison Best New Product Awards.

The awards symbolize the persistence and excellence personified by Thomas Alva Edison, inspiring America's drive to remain in the forefront of innovation, creativity and ingenuity in the global economy, officials said.

"This year's awards recognized a broad array of innovations, including far-reaching products, services and technologies that impact daily life," said Edison Awards Steering Committee Chair Sarah Miller Caldicott, a great grandniece of Thomas Edison. "The awards applauded the forward-thinking innovations for which Thomas Edison remains internationally admired. It's exciting to see companies like Zonar continuing his legacy of challenging conventional thinking."

ZPass utilizes a combination of passive radio frequency identification, GPS tracking, wireless communications and Ground Traffic Control, Zonar's web-based fleet management portal, to help school districts ensure the safety of school bus riders by providing real-time information about when and where students entered and exited the bus.

"We are both proud and honored to be the only telematics company recognized with this prestigious award," said Chris Oliver, vice president of marketing at Zonar Systems. "Challenging ourselves to continually provide innovative, customer-focused solutions has been and will always be our focus at Zonar."

The ballot of nominees for the Edison Best New Product Awards was judged by roughly 2,000 members of the not-for-profit Marketing Executives Networking Group, an organization comprising America's top marketing professionals and academics. In a comprehensive peer-review process, the nominees were judged on marketplace innovation, marketplace success, technological innovation, market structure innovation, societal impact and design innovation.

Winners of the awards were announced at the Capitale ballroom in New York. In addition to announcing this year's Best New Product Award recipients, the evening featured the presentation of the Edison Achievement Award to Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford Motor Co., and to John Hendricks, founder and chairman of Discovery Communications.