Q: A good seat must be both comfortable and safe. How do you create a product with this balance?
A: Johnson is not the average seating manufacturer – seating is our biggest business today. For a lot of our OEMs, there are global, European as well as Chinese standards and regulations to make sure the seating is safe enough.
For comfort, you can't compare seats in your living room with seats in your car. But we still focus on both safety and comfort. We have a lot of testing equipment to make sure our products are reliable. Also, we bought another testing machine for 40 million yuan last year that is the best in the world. You can't find it in Europe or America. It can help us to judge whether the seat is too hard or soft and the feelings you have, so it's very helpful.
Another thing is that Chinese customers have different feelings from Europeans. For BMW, their customers often employ a driver and they like to sit in the second row. And they like a seat that's a little softer with more space. So BMW promotes cars that you can only buy here rather than in Europe.
Q: Nowadays, environmental protection is becoming more and more popular in China and throughout the world. It draws much attention. Does SJJ take any measures to protect the environment?
A: A more comfortable, safe and sustainable world is our vision. And we consider sustainability a top priority. Johnson makes many efforts to protect the environment. We have power solutions. Also, we put some focus on efficiency control. And all the local OEMs are on the same level as BMW in environmental protection.
We have projects working to control emissions from the facility. And we set four stations to measure the emissions every day. Then we send 35 samples to Shanghai, and they take a special test of the chemicals samples to find whether they meet the global and national standards. Also, we use newer facilities to meet the global emission standard.
About Sven Kunath
Sven Kunath is general manager of Shenyang Jinbei Johnson Controls Automotive Interiors Co Ltd (SJJ).
He worked for the Lear Corporation from 1996 to 1999. In 1999, he joined Johnson as general manager of engineering and was located in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Then he worked as the chief engineer of seating development in Italy in 2002. In 2003, he took the position of director CI interior BU JC Europe. He came to Shanghai to be in charge of the company's Asia business in 2005. In 2006, he became the general manager of SJJ.
Sven has an MBA from ISM Dortmund and a master's degree from Technical University Darmstadt in mechanical engineering.
