Today’s automotive industry is actually more complex than you might have thought. If you are anything like me, not tech savvy, to find a more suitable expression, you might think that a car is entirely assembled by its manufacturer. For instance, the new Mercedes Benz S-Class is entirely assembled in Stuttgart Germany, where the company has its headquarters and a huge production plant; or that the Audi A6 is built from scratch in Ingolstadt; and the list could go on.
Fact is, nothing could be less true, as I recently found out. Cars are indeed assembled on a manufacturer’s production plant, but their individual parts are not. Car makers design each individual piece that goes into a car, but they do not fabricate these parts themselves, at least not all of them, that is.
There are several multinational corporations that take on these tasks and some of the most important names in the automotive industry are Hella, Continental and Leman Industrie. Each of these corporations sees to the manufacturing of a specific array of pieces that the end client has ordered.
To be even more specific, Hella is an international corporation that manufactures headlights and other lighting solutions for today’s automotive giants. Chances are, your car is equipped with Hella headlights. Continental handles all the complex security and entertainment systems that are characteristic of a modern-day vehicle, but also the tires.
Leman Industrie provides crucial parts to both the middle client, in this scenario Hella and Continental, and the end client, in this case, represented by Mercedes Benz or Audi, for that matter. The company has an outstandingly well-optimized production structure and the countless employees must possess some serious technical skills and technical expertise.
Such a company assists the end client from the conception of a new vehicle to its very production and launch on the international market. With more than four decades in the industry, this particular company is now regarded as one of the preferred experts with the ordering parties.
To summarize, that vehicle you use every day is more than just a car – in fact, it is a technological wonder that was built, tiny piece by tiny piece, by thousands of people from across the globe.