Continental AG is expanding its area of engineering services for automobile manufacturers and their suppliers, in addition to its core business.
"For 2005 we are aiming to achieve corporate sales volumes in the double-digit million range," says Dr. Karl-Thomas Neumann, Continental executive board member. "In the area of vehicle dynamics and suspension control in particular, we are filling a niche that to date has hardly been tackled by engineering service providers, as only very few companies have the required broad technical knowledge of automotive brakes, chassis, electronics and tires."
The engineering services offered by Continental's EBS (Electronic Brake and Safety Systems) business unit focus on the driving dynamics of the vehicle. "Our portfolio includes time-to-market support, vehicle equipment, software development, extra-small-scale productions, automotive processes, consulting and development tasks for motor racing," says Dr. Stefan Stölzl, head of software products and engineering services at Continental Teves in Frankfurt, Germany.
"Our goal is to shorten the development times for our customers. The customer-specific vehicle equipment is often used to study the feasibility of new ideas and systems in the car manufacturer's advanced engineering stage. Similarly, customer's special wishes are tailored for the respective vehicle and then put directly into production."
Continental's NVH Engineering profit center provides complete solutions in the field of acoustics and vibration technology.
"NVH stands for noise, vibration and harshness, and thus refers to the entire range of vibration perception, from hearing to feeling," says Dr. Frank Gauterin, head of NVH Engineering. "In our labs and on our test tracks, we optimize the entire vehicle as well as individual components for production applications. In doing this, we put to use not only our NVH expertise but also the profound and broad product know-how of the Continental corporation.
"With the help of computer simulations, we define the optimum product design from an acoustic standpoint at an early stage in the development."
The Continental test center and testing grounds are also accessible to external customers.
The materials research and development department of ContiTech AG provides its customers with extensive material characterization using state-of-the-art chemical and physical analysis methods, including macroscopic and microscopic analysis methods.
"Chemical analysis methods such as thermo analysis, spectroscopy and chromatography round off our range of services," says Dr. Wolfram Herrmann, head of materials research and development at ContiTech.
