New Technical Centre Staff to Boost Cooper Innovation

An increased pace of new product development has prompted Cooper Tire & Rubber to increase staff levels at its three technical centres. During 2010 a total of approximately 40 new employees will come on board, including several at the company’s European Technical Centre in Melksham. Cooper states that 25 engineers and scientists will also begin work at its North America Technical Center in Ohio and 13 at its Asian Technical Center in Shanghai.

“To support our strategy of introducing exciting new products at an ever increasing pace, we are continuing to strengthen our capability to feed the Cooper innovation pipeline by increasing technology resources in every region of the company,” said Chuck Yurkovich, Cooper’s vice president of global technology. “Finding good technical people and rapidly on-boarding them will be critical to our pace of new product development over the next three to five years.”

Cooper will add engineers in its performance passenger, light truck/SUV and commercial truck tyre product development groups, materials engineers and chemists to its materials development departments, CAD engineers and CAM programmers, FEA engineers and software developers to the computer aided engineering discipline, technologists and test development engineers to its materials laboratories and tire testing labs, and an additional test driver to its staff at Cooper’s test track near San Antonio, Texas. With the hiring of additional engineers, scientists and developers, the company says it plans to support enhanced product lines and broaden overall technical capabilities. 

The US based tyre maker has also announced its intention to hire 200 new employees at its Texarkana factory. At present the plant has around 1,500 workers on the payroll at produced 450 types of passenger car and light commercial vehicle tyre. The Texarkana plant has manufactured an additional 75 tyre types since the closure of Cooper’s Albany facility; the Texarkana site itself was earmarked for possible closure before state incentives from Arkansas and Texas helped assure its continued operation.