Our Centre for Innovation and Technology – the CIT

Designed for the future

The automotive industry faces special challenges both today and in the future. Business processes will be significantly more influenced by new and sustainable developments such as digitalisation and streamlined workflows.

The increasing transparency of companies will make the control of flows of goods and work processes more flexible. Suppliers and customers will work together in an even more networked way and use intelligently designed processes. Costs are optimized, goods flows reduced, information generated and used intelligently.

Both politics and legislation will also make their own demands and will promote and drive a change in the areas of energy management and mobility. The reduction of emissions is to be achieved through new forms of mobility.

Components made of metallic materials will continue to play an important role, especially high-strength and ultra-high strength steels are economically very interesting in this regard. Already today weight savings are achievable which could hardly be imagined just a few years ago without a loss of functionality and stability.

WHW Hillebrand Group is a service provider for high-quality corrosion protective surfaces and is already working intensively on this “change process” in the automotive industry and the developments which are being derived from it.

In order to meet the future requirements of the industry and to continue being a reliable partner for innovations in the field of surface systems for our customers, we have decided to invest in a trendsetting Centre for Innovation and Technology.

The Centre for Innovation and Technology, also known as CIT, was opened in October 2017 after just 14 months of construction. All relevant factors influencing the development and optimisation of surface systems are combined and synchronised here.

Groundbreaking and innovative surface protection

A holistically oriented competence centre for the research and development of new products and processes is the perfect breeding ground for surface protection designed in a path-breaking, interdisciplinary manner using the most modern methods. This is done because our customers’ satisfaction is the focus of our actions. We see the common challenges of the future as an opportunity to differentiate ourselves from our competitors – with products that are reliable, solid and perfectly tailored to the needs of our customers.