Hungarian automotive industry: week 39 2018 edition
Industry prospects, vocational education, employer wages. Let’s recap what the 39th week of the year brought in Hungary’s automotive sector.
The Suzuki plant in Esztergom has unveiled the new Vitara. The previous generation brought significant success to the manufacturer, and Suzuki is expecting similar buyer feedback from the new model.
“Letting go employees after 20-30 years and hiring cheap, fresh recruits instead of increasing wages is the equivalence of giving up on quality,” corporate management consultant László Baranyai told us in an interview.
“The automotive industry has never been a sanatorium. A supply chain manager or production manager can expect phone calls in the middle of the night due to a production halt, which he must solve to allow the shipments to go out at 6 am.
"Halting production lines could cost up to thousands of euros, but unfortunately additional logistics costs can also go up into the hundreds of thousands if a part has to be air shipped over a long distance. Although Hungarian quality experts are excellent, there is a shortage due to foreign companies constantly picking them up,” Tequa partner Péter T. György told us in an interview.
László Palkovics will be responsible for the sustainable economic, educational and cultural development of the Debrecen automotive centre and its region as government commissioner.
A new HUF 3 billion programme has launched recently to support cooperation in R&D and excellence.
AVL’s scholarship programme will award BSc undergraduates with a HUF 150,000 and MSc undergraduates with a HUF 200,000 monthly grant.
According to László Parragh, chairman of the Hungarian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, in the current vocational system practical educators should be acknowledged with higher salaries.
“The industry is luring students who have extraordinary skills for specific tasks but are not able to back their vocational know-how with a diploma.
“I am trying to convince businesses to strive for building a future through the process of reflection,” Zoltán Siménfalvi, dean at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Information Technology at the University of Miskolc.
The team from Neumann János University of Kecskemét finished in third place with their solar-powered vehicle at the European Solar Challenge, which lined up 18 university teams this year.
Built by the university’s educators and students, the vehicle called Megalux covered a total distance of 878 kilometres powered exclusively by electricity in 24 hours at the event held in Belgium.
IAA
SEG Automotive, owned by the China-based Zhengzhou Coal Mining Machinery Group, showcased two products, a starter motor and an alternator at their stand. The company’s spokesperson said the 28V Heavy Duty Second Generation Generator will enter production at the company’s Miskolc site from 2020.
At the exhibition a team of Hungarian researchers showcased Knorr-Bremse’s highway-compatible autonomous system. The Highway Pilot system allows manoeuvring and handling traffic on public roads and highways.
