The new £70m, 220,000 sq ft, state-of-the art technical centre houses the current 700 staff with room for growth. The site features the latest technology and infrastructure for developing advanced solutions for an autonomous, electric and connected mobility future. The facility design and architecture underpins ZF's plans for carbon neutrality by 2040.
The official opening event was marked by a ribbon-cutting, performed by the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street and was attended by VIPs including representatives from the UK’s top Engineering Universities, senior representatives of UK Government departments and associated strategists for next generation mobility.
Peter Lakie, ZF Senior Vice President and Key Account Executive, said: “I am very proud of the teams here: those that had the vision and those who worked to bring that vision to life. The passion of these people, with the support of all the staff has created a state-of-the-art sustainable environment that promotes collaboration and agile working practices.”
The facility is a multi-disciplinary, multi-divisional location, collaborating on the development of key technologies and system solutions for Active and Passive Safety Systems: Autonomous Driving, Cyber-Security, Electronics, Braking and Steering Systems as well as Electrified Powertrain solutions and Race Engineering. The location is also designated as ZF’s global Centre of Competency for Servo-Motors design. In these future-oriented areas, ZF is increasing the number of R&D specialists at the Shirley location. These technologies are all contributing to solutions which utilise high levels of autonomous driving and electromobility.
Alastair McQueen, Site Lead at Shirley, said at the opening: “In the design of this new facility, we made a specific effort to ensure that we created a future proof working environment which was going to encourage collaboration and Agile working practices – one that would enable and accelerate the development of new technologies in support of ZF’s Next generation Mobility Goals”.
The new site also enables greater customer collaboration – from project support to launch support. As an example, ZF supplies Mahindra Racing with the e-powertrain and dampers for their Formula E Racecar and was delighted to host the launch of the team’s Series 8 Formla E Racecar later the same day.
