Continental Romania: We invest in connectivity, automated driving, electrification, optimization of combustion engines and mobility service systems

Continental has over 20,000 employees in 13 locations in Romania and the company has managed to grow steadily in 19 years of activity, according to Christian von Albrichsfeld, CEO Continental Romania. Naming only one outstanding project for Continental in Romania is hard, he tells The Diplomat – Bucharest.

“I would rather talk about the spectacular growth of the company in Romania and about the confidence that my colleagues have received – specialist and experts in their fields of activity – and have thus determined the development of the company and its transformation into a true technological leader. The innovations in the automotive sector, the view and achievements in the direction of the smart city, which brings together the most fascinating trends in the automotive world: connectivity, electrification and autonomous driving transform the projects we are working on into real outstanding achievements Continental meets,” he adds.

Continental has grown from only a small number of people in 2000 and only from the tire manufacturing activity, to over 20,000 in 2019, out of which over a third are engineers (specialists and experts) in research and development centers. From a single location, Timisoara, Continental is now present in Iasi, Brasov, Sibiu, Nadab, Carei and Bucharest.

“Our locations in Romania are focused and involved in technical innovations, lead pilot projects, and look for most efficient solutions in all our business segments: research, development and production. For our employees, this meant from the beginning working with latest technologies, being part and often leading challenging projects in international teams,” says von Albrichsfeld.

“In other words, the company environment enabled our colleagues to develop both on professional and personal level. Our complex, various and continuously adapting activities require employees with best capabilities and who constantly further develop their knowledge. Continental is one of the companies who reintroduced and fully supports the Dual School education system in Romania and has close collaboration with the universities for all the study programs,” he continues.

In his opinion, the common projects with locations all over the world, the interaction with new people, the multicultural networking and exchange, the business trips its colleagues had over the time abroad, influenced significantly their expectations concerning the quality of life in their home cities and country.

“Their standards got higher, they wished to have the same opportunities as the citizens of higher developed countries and managed to obtain increased comfort on national level,” he explains. “Thus, the location, the towns where we are located developed due to our investments and our employees, raising the standards of living and life quality, therefore offering conditions for Romanians to work on a high technology level and remain in the country.

I think this growth this raising of standards and many Romanian pilots is really the most successful project that Continental has implemented in Romania.”

Important projects for Continental

Continental has started the building of the new office building in Iasi. The new workplace was designed for a capacity of up to 1,700 people. The total planned investment in the new space is 27 million Euro. Also, Sibiu location is expanding: this year is planned the opening of new office building for research and development and also the construction of the Module 6 for production.

“We invested, as well, 1.9 million Euro in an innovative automated small parts storage system for the electronic plant in Timisoara,” says von Albrichsfeld. “Of course, these investments assume the development of new projects in the direction of electromobility, a more and better-connected world. Smart city products and technologies for the city of tomorrow are included in the daily tasks of our engineers.”

In his opinion, environmentally efficient and socially accepted technologies are the key ingredients for a healthy mobility ecosystem: “Zero accidents, zero emissions and zero stress thanks to smart connectivity and convenience: this is what our pioneering technologies are helping to realize.”

He goes on to say that Continental is a technological leader in the automotive sector and one of the directions in which the company carries out an intense activity aims at developing innovative software and hardware solutions for the interior of the car, safety, engine and transmission, as well as navigation systems and tools for future cars and commercial vehicles.

“New and changed competencies are needed constantly in this industry and the company is focused into being a leading technology company,” says von Albrichsfeld. “New competencies mean development of new products, shaping new business models and designing new office concepts, such as open spaces allowing collaborative work and interaction between colleagues, but also concentrated work which leads to new ideas that put the future in motion.

Trends in the automotive industry, the autonomous car, the HMI interaction systems, the smart sensors are just some of the technologies our colleagues are innovating in the direction of digitalization. Our production units run various projects in direction of Industry 4.0 implementation, latest the investment of the first fully automatic storage system in Timisoara.”

Christian von Albrichsfeld goes on to say that Continental plans include qualification of the people increases the quality we offer through the products and technologies we produce and develop and through the use of internet of things; attracting well-trained people. Working in international teams contributes fully to the rapid and efficient transfer of knowledge in an area that is moving extremely fast and which requires continuous development; the continuation of a good collaboration with the universities that generate an organic development of the company; We create new skills on the side of artificial intelligence, cloud technology, big data. All these activities transformed Romania into a hub in the field of research and development in the automotive / IT sector.”

Hopes for the future

“We are expecting a very challenging year 2020, with many issues regarding the economic and political environment, both national and international. National, because of the high increase on cost given by law for companies and state due to the salary and pension increase,” says von Albrichsfeld.

“For companies – this is much higher than the productivity increase, requiring ongoing and accelerated product portfolio adjustments and further automatizations which from the labour perspective require higher qualified employees,” he continues. “From state budget view, this high cost increase will significantly reduce the freedom of activities from national level until the single communal administration and negatively affect the possibilities of sustainable investments. And all this in the current context of a worldwide economy being at the end of a nearly 10 years growth cycle with therefore significantly reduced growth rates for Romania. The Romanian macroeconomic and business scene will be influenced significantly by the global economy trend, but also by the second election year in row which is to come with its consequences. The way the government will act, especially in the current worldwide economy, keeps us curious. We will see how responsible the government will act in this situation.”

Christian von Albrichsfeld says the automotive industry is in full transformation process in terms of electrification, artificial intelligence, big data, cyber security: “Innovative ideas put into practice put the future in motion. This is what we are trying to do: to bring pioneering and services for sustainable and connected mobility of people and their goods. We work in direction of connectivity, automated driving, electrification, optimization of combustion engines and mobility service systems, staying open for technologies trends. This is what we expect from the automotive industry in the years to come. Of course, there are several issues worldwide which need to be clarified: the relation between US and China and Europe, declining growth rates in Asia, the Brexit, and the strict regulations concerning emissions set by the European Union which are facing the automotive industry on a global level.”

Message to business peers

“Trust, Passion to Win, Freedom to Act and For One Another are the core values of our company,” says von Albrichsfeld. “We, at Continental, always act according to this value and that is the way we manage to shape the future, to meet the challenges described above, to set up higher and higher expectations and to meet and to overpass them in our relation to our business partners as well as regarding our colleagues inside the company.”

(From the print edition)