InCar – the “ideas pool” for the automotive industry.

The challenge:

As much as cars have to have a solid, rigid design, the people who develop them have to be flexible. And that’s not all – every car maker has their own idea of what makes the perfect body. So how can ThyssenKrupp appease every single customer in the automotive industry with just one system, a system that shortens the development time for new body components and leaves a smaller footprint at the same time? How will we manage to make vehicles lighter, more economical, and lower-emission while making them safer, built to last even longer, and more comfortable?

Inner values count with cars, too. The project InCar enables automobile manufacturers to access the concentrated competence of ThyssenKrupp.

The solution:

InCar is our wide-ranging research and development offensive for innovation and products in automotive construction. This cross-segment project pools the entire store of expertise from Group businesses with automotive know-how within the ThyssenKrupp Group. InCar is designed as a solutions and ideas pool for body, chassis and powertrain products – it examines parts, assemblies, and systems before developing a number of solutions for customers with very different needs. Beginning with the underlying design idea to choosing the material, ThyssenKrupp expertise is extensive enough to meet every single requirement of automobile manufacturers. This led to a breakthrough kit system which allows every vehicle developer to piece together the right solution. As a result, many models and ideas call the InCar Pool home, such as three B-pillar models. Optimized for weight, these pillars are particularly cost-efficient and make considerable improvements to the car body’s safety.

Jessica Hermenitt-Faath: a strong woman behind a strong project. She develops concepts for the car of tomorrow.

The forger of the future:

Jessica Hermenitt-Faath is a project manager in sales and engineering at the Auto Division at ThyssenKrupp Steel. American by birth, she studied German and business administration before working for a top-ranked automobile manufacturer in the United States. For the past seven years, she’s called ThyssenKrupp home. Perhaps the most important thing about her: she never gives up when she has a good idea. When InCar launched in 2006, the primary aim was to create one unified “voice” for all the segments when working with the automotive industry. At ThyssenKrupp, we wanted to consolidate our expertise to make the most of it. It was a plan that was immediately met with skepticism – opponents thought that such a complicated project would never work. However, Hermenitt-Faath and her team had already devised a solution. A joint project center in Dortmund, Germany made sure that each team knew what the others were doing. This simplified coordination, allowed us at ThyssenKrupp to deepen our own expertise as a group, and truly made everyone feel like “we’re in this together.” And it wasn’t long before employees around the globe started lauding InCar’s first successes, as automotive industry customers took to the ideas supplied by engineers, planners, and strategists with open arms.

In summary:

Engineers at ThyssenKrupp can craft just the right solution for every customer because we sail over hurdles as a team. Even if those hurdles only exist in our co-workers’ heads.

Got your pedal to the metal? Please explore some of our other flagship projects.