Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, Owner, Dr. Peter Pleus, President of Schaeffler Group Automotive (present in place of Norbert Indlekofer), Dr. Christoph Löffel, Head of the Ball Screw Drive Product Line as well as the Plant Manager for the Herzogenaurach location, Peter Wirkner, all took part in a ceremony to celebrate the one-millionth ball screw drive for electromechanical steering systems to leave the Schaeffler Group’s fully automated production facility.
This product has been manufactured in Herzogenaurach since 2007 and is used in the electromechanical steering of the Volkswagen Tiguan. The major applications for ball screw drives are in the aviation industry, in which these high precision components are used in the tail unit steering of airplanes. In the automotive industry, these low-friction and noise-optimized ball screw drives represent still another component that helps save fuel and reduce CO2. A great benefit offered by electromechanical steering systems compared to conventional hydraulic power steering lies in the fact that servomotors require energy only when specific steering motions are carried out while hydraulic pumps must maintain hydraulic pressure at all times and accordingly need more energy.
And it isn’t just progressive steering systems that ball screw drives are becoming increasingly important for. Other automotive applications include electromechanical brake systems and electronically controlled track adjusters for rear axle steering systems.
For Maria-Elisabeth Schaeffler, reaching one million ball screw drives is an “incentive to be committed to keeping up the good work.” Ball screw drives are one of many products manufactured by Schaeffler Group Automotive that have great potential for the future. Customer orders for 1.2 million ball screw drives have already been secured for 2010. Orders for the two subsequent years amount to 1.9 and 2.3 million ball screw drives respectively. “We are one of the leading innovators in this industry and we will continue to do all we can to convince our customers through our innovative capacity and quality,” explains Christoph Löffel, Head of the Ball Screw Drives Product Line.
Besides Volkswagen, customers for the first million units of ball screw drives include automotive supplier TRW. This means that this energy efficient steering system is not only used in Europe but also in the United States in vehicles made by Volkswagen, Ford and BMW.
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