Bendix announced its Tech Center in Monterrey, Mexico, is celebrating its 5th anniversary.
The facility opened in 2018 with 34 employees – 32 of them engineers – in a 7,800-sq.-ft. space. Five years later, the Technical Center that Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems LLC (Bendix) launched is home to 80 engineers and some three dozen administrative employees in a facility expanded to more than 25,500 square feet, featuring a larger lab, additional office space, and a state-of-the-art vehicle engineering garage now under construction, the company said.
Located in the Research and Technological Innovation Park (PIIT), the center has helped Bendix further expand its North American presence by powering research and development across the company’s expansive portfolio of integrated products and solutions. The Monterrey-based team – working in tandem with Bendix and Knorr-Bremse engineering colleagues across North America and worldwide, respectively – helps advance new and emerging technologies to deliver more value to the company’s global customers and strengthen its global presence. Knorr-Bremse is Bendix’s Munich, Germany-based parent company.
“The Monterrey facility – designed to help expand Bendix’s global engineering capabilities – was aimed at growth from the start, and it has more than delivered for the company and our customers,” said Claus Beyer, vice president – ADAS/HAD North America and chief engineer at Bendix.
Bendix’s headquarters in Avon, Ohio, serves as the company’s engineering and R&D leadership hub. In addition to Monterrey, Bendix also maintains engineering operations in Acuña; Hanover, Pennsylvania; Irvine, California; Kalamazoo, Michigan; Sterling Heights, Michigan; and Vancouver, British Columbia.
A fundamental goal of the Monterrey Technical Center is to help develop and validate new generations of applied safety technologies for commercial vehicles while increasing overall value for customers, Bendix said. At its start, the center’s engineers worked toward this goal by serving as contributors to projects led in Avon. Today, Monterrey leads projects of its own.
“Our Monterrey engineers demonstrated their expertise and exceeded expectations,” said Juan Carlos Mellado, director of product engineering at Bendix – Mexico. “The company sees the abilities and skills of these engineers and recognizes the value they bring to product development, in concert with Bendix across North America. The Monterrey team is proud to fulfill its promise by complementing and helping advance the R&D work of Avon and Bendix’s other powerful North American engineering centers – all with responsiveness to customer needs remaining top of mind.”
A key part of the Technical Center’s growth has been an investment to increase the size and capabilities of its lab. Now 150% larger, the lab is home to functions ranging from vibration and other mechanical testing to electrostatic discharge validation, according to Bendix.
As the center has grown, Bendix added, it has also accelerated its ability to train new engineering team members with less input from the Avon hub. This more efficient transfer of knowledge has contributed to the center’s evolution into project owners.
The latest growth at the Technical Center is its expansion into vehicle testing. Construction is underway on a new, more than $1.1 million USD engineering truck garage across the street from the center. This investment will result in a facility for Bendix’s Monterrey engineers to outfit vehicles and perform testing, both simulations and in-vehicle, the company said.
