50 Manufacturing Companies – Continental

One such innovation Continental demonstrated is OcSM (Occupant Safety Monitor), which is currently being developed further at TCI, Bangalore, utilising and integrating solutions and building blocks from its other existing products using electronics.
With OcSM, the occupants’ postures and other parameters will be monitored visually using cameras, indicating the optimum seating posture using Artificial Intelligence  algorithms to dynamically adapt airbag deployment strategies. This is an example of how AI is being used in emerging technologies for safety in automation. 
“This innovation, which is still under development, was showcased recently at SIAT 2019, Pune. The most important part of this innovation is not only about the safety of the occupant but also the comfort and understanding the user. As we move towards autonomous mobility, one cannot even call them the driver if they are being driven by autonomous vehicles, they are users/occupants,” says .
Speaking about R&D hubs in India, Klotz says that the growth potential is a driving factor and the availability of talented engineers and the capabilities of a location to manage this talent pool is a big driver. “We’re in the market for the market. While we cannot be in every city, it is important to stay close to the customer for the engineering; this applies more strongly to manufacturing sectors. India is also a hub for Asia where we supply application projects to China, Japan and Korea and certainly for the India market as well,” he adds.
The qualities of resources have been driven by the availability of skilled engineers. The company has a motivated team here where it works on innovations, and patents. “We need to ‘convince with value’ the customers and that’s the only way we can grow,” he says.
Continental is at a place where it has moved from taking partial responsibility to taking full project responsibility in product and innovation development. It has already moved into base production. Klotz would like TCI at the level where the development of a global innovation – starting from ideation to the deployment of the product – comes from TCI.