Further Expansion with start of Production in Debrecen

After just two years of con­struc­tion, the newest Vitesco Tech­nolo­gies plant in Debre­cen, Hun­gary, went now into oper­a­tion. In the future, the dri­ve spe­cial­ist will pro­duce high-tech elec­tron­ics and trans­mis­sion sen­sor tech­nol­o­gy for all types of dri­ve sys­tems in an area of around 7,000 square meters – from all-elec­tric vehi­cles to plug-in hybrid vehi­cles and elec­tri­fied com­bus­tion engines. The com­pa­ny is thus fur­ther expand­ing its inter­na­tion­al pres­ence in order to be able to meet the glob­al demand for clean dri­ve solu­tions. The com­pa­ny has invest­ed a total of around €100 mil­lion in the plant.
“We are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly align­ing our com­pa­ny to the growth mar­ket of elec­tron­ics and elec­tri­fi­ca­tion,” explains Andreas Wolf, CEO: “With our new pro­duc­tion facil­i­ty in Debre­cen, we are expand­ing our Euro­pean pro­duc­tion net­work and are able to com­pet­i­tive­ly han­dle our cus­tomers’ increas­ing demand for effi­cient and clean dri­ve tech­nolo­gies with high qual­i­ty standards.”
One first large-scale pro­duc­tion to be man­u­fac­tured in Debre­cen, is the trans­mis­sion con­trol unit with over­mold­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Com­pared with con­ven­tion­al devices, it is not only more robust and lighter, but it also requires con­sid­er­ably few­er pro­duc­tion steps. This is thanks to an inno­v­a­tive process known as over­mold­ing. Here, the elec­tron­ic com­po­nents, which are arranged on a print­ed cir­cuit board as in clas­sic con­trol units, are embed­ded in plastic.The con­cern uses new, high-pre­ci­sion injec­tion mold­ing process­es as well as new, par­tic­u­lar­ly resis­tant plastics.
In addi­tion to the elec­tron­ic con­trol sys­tems, the pro­duc­tion plant in Debre­cen also cov­ers fur­ther com­po­nents in the fields of elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and elec­tric mobil­i­ty, includ­ing 48-volt belt starter gen­er­a­tors for mild hybrids.

LEED certified: Clear Focus on the Environment and Sustainability

“This high-tech plant is already show­ing what the fac­to­ry of tomor­row will look like – intel­li­gent, lean and green. With the lat­est Indus­try 4.0 solu­tions in all pro­duc­tion areas and with a clear focus on the envi­ron­ment and sus­tain­abil­i­ty, we are active­ly shap­ing the future of pro­duc­tion at Vitesco Technologies.”
— Dr. Hans-Jür­gen Braun, Head of Operations

The com­pa­ny is also striv­ing for LEED cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for the new plant: Lead­er­ship in Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Design (LEED) is a sys­tem for clas­si­fy­ing eco­log­i­cal con­struc­tion, devel­oped by the US Green Build­ing Coun­cil in 1998. The inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized gold cat­e­go­ry is award­ed exclu­sive­ly to projects that meet strict require­ments and stan­dards for envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly, resource­ef­fi­cient and sus­tain­able construction.
For exam­ple, by hav­ing its own solar pan­els for ener­gy gen­er­a­tion and con­sis­tent recy­cling. In addi­tion, the facil­i­ty has ful­ly inte­grat­ed build­ing and ener­gy man­age­ment sys­tems which con­trol the build­ing para­me­ters based on real-time require­ments. In May 2019, the design and struc­ture were pre-cer­ti­fied. Final cer­ti­fi­ca­tion is intend­ed by the end of March 2021.
In line with the Indus­try 4.0 con­cept, the plant is flex­i­bly designed with autonomous trans­port robots in the pro­duc­tion hall, an intel­li­gent ware­house man­age­ment sys­tem, com­put­er-assist­ed main­te­nance sys­tems, and oth­er auto­mat­ed build­ing func­tions. All new employ­ees com­plete a tai­lor-made men­tor­ing and qual­i­fi­ca­tion pro­gram in the company’s own train­ing cen­ter with­in the first six months.