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VANDALIA, OH – Inteva Products dedicates its new engineering center here this week to support development of world-class vehicle interiors, and an executive says the supplier hopes to hire additional engineers within five years.
Some 145 employees have taken over the new technical center that used to be occupied by Evenflo. Until recently, this group of engineers, technicians and support staff rented office space inside the Delphi plant on the opposite side of the Interstate.
The employees had been part of Delphi until its interiors business was sold to private-equity investors Renco Group and became Inteva in March 2008.
Inteva has 200 engineers globally dedicated to vehicle interiors, including 160 in North America.
The engineering staff here numbers 110, and Inteva’s target is to reach about 130 in the next three to five years, Patrick Stewart, vice president and executive director for Inteva Interior Systems, tells Ward’s.
“It’s not tomorrow, and it’s not next week,” Stewart says. “But it’s very steady, anticipated growth we are pursuing. It’s a solid 5-year business plan.”
In addition to the extra hires in Ohio, Inteva hopes to add an equal number of new engineers at its headquarters in Troy, MI, in the same timeframe, Stewart says.
Following through on that strategy requires the company to meet its revenue goals in the years to come and assumes relative stability in overall industry sales and the arrival of new contracts.
