Hankook Tire Seeking Engineers for ETC

Hankook Tire has announced plans to top up the talent pool at its Europe Technical Center (ETC) in Germany. The Korean tyre maker intends to take on three new engineers before the end of the year, increasing the number of developmental team specialists at the Langenhagen site near Hanover to 36. These new additions follow three other new appointments at the centre this year; in total, the developmental team will grow by more than 16 per cent during 2009 – a growth rate, as Hankook notes, that meets the company’s economic growth.

Having expanded 33 per cent during 2008, the European market is seen by Hankook as an “engine for growth of the company’s global development,” especially in the UHP and environmentally friendly tyre segments. Indeed, the company’s ETC is focusing intensely upon these two products: “These tyres are developed and adapted to the local markets at the Hankook Tire Europe Technical Center and are produced at Hankook’s new European plant in Hungary,” the company reports in a statement.

“A tyre engineer needs a keen sense for the dynamic aspects of a car,” explains Stefan Fischer, head of the development team at Hankook Tire and director of the ETC, when outlining the tasks that tyre engineers face. “Tyres are the central interaction unit between the road and the car and account for a considerable amount of driving safety and dynamics. Only a few drivers take this into consideration.”

“The development of a new tyre always means engaging with the entity of a car,” Fischer continues. “It is the combination of several requirements that makes the development of tyres so interesting these days”.

The tasks of tyre engineers at the ETC are, notes Hankook, challenging. The team members control and accompany a product’s development process from the technical blueprint, using specially adapted CAD-computers, through to final acceptance from the car manufacturer and the start of series production. Car fitment checks and on-road tests are carried out consistently during the whole development process, with some of these performed in close cooperation with OEM customers at various European testing facilities. These tests provide an assurance of product quality and deliver important data for the next stage of development. “Our engineers have to deal with tyres as a product as a whole in all its complexity. It’s definitely a challenge but the mix of customer requirements, planning on the computer, driving on proving grounds and monitoring the tyre production makes our work here so exciting and versatile”, reports Fischer.

Typical areas of study for the tyre engineers Hankook seeks are mechanical engineering or similar fields, as well as other scientific specialisations such as chemistry. But it takes more than an outstanding degree to land a job at Hankook: “Candidates should have a passion for the automobile, and there should be clear evidence of that passion from their studies – for example, relevant internships, papers or projects,” Fischer concludes.