I am Vice President of Sales and Development for North America. I started with KERN-LIEBERS in 1985 as a Sales Engineer. I then worked for many years in the development of our power spring business for seat belts in North America. Today, we are working with all teams to offer our customers the full product portfolio of the KERN-LIEBERS Group – not only strip springs, but also wire springs and other products.
KERN-LIEBERS USA was the first foreign branch of the KERN-LIEBERS Group. We started production in Toledo, Ohio in 1975. Most seat belt manufacturing was done in the USA and Canada at that time. Because of its proximity to the major north/south and east/west highways, power spring production was centralized in Toledo. One of our early tasks was to introduce the texture-rolled spring steel strip "Primaflex" to our North American customers. Within just a few years, we successfully converted the entire market from stainless steel (301SS) to texture-rolled steel strip. As our customers moved to Mexico because of the lower costs, we followed and established KERN-LIEBERS Texas in 1988. Today, KERN-LIEBERS Texas is the largest manufacturer of power springs for safety belt systems in the KERN-LIEBERS Group. We continue to hold a large share of the North American market and also deliver to South America.
Many of our customers have become global system suppliers to the automotive industry. KERN-LIEBERS has followed with production facilities all over the world, and now supplies local products for local markets. This led to a situation in which price negotiations are now conducted globally and independent of location, and cooperation with local buyers has become limited. KERN-LIEBERS has responded by introducing key account management for its sales and distribution in order to improve communication with customers and coordinate global activities.
In North America, we see the market remaining relatively flat over the next few years with little growth in automotive production, so we will increasingly offer our customers other springs from our product portfolio in order to continue to grow our business in North America. Innovations such as the belt bag retractor require springs with much higher retraction forces than a standard belt retractor. By getting involved in the development phase early, we can work together with the customer to develop the best possible solution – without impacting the service life of the spring. The self-driving vehicles of the near future will require seat belts integrated into the seat – whatever happens in this sector, it will involve new developments. We look forward to these challenges because this is an area in which we can also contribute our many years of experience and development expertise.