Nexteer Automotive was named a GM Innovation Award winner during General Motors’s 26th annual Supplier of the Year awards ceremony held Friday, April 20 in Orlando, Florida.
GM’s Innovation Award recognizes the top suppliers among thousands of global contenders who introduced innovations that benefit customers. Nexteer Automotive was named one of four 2017 Innovation Award winners for High Availability Electric Power Steering System (EPS) – a steering innovation that enables advanced safety for varying levels of autonomous driving.
“Nexteer’s High Availability Electric Power Steering ensures that the driver’s steering safety net is always ‘on’ as the automotive industry moves towards varying levels of autonomous driving. It’s all about safety and performance,” said Leah Lemanski, Nexteer Engineering Manager.
Nexteer’s High Availability EPS provides integrated back-up hardware and software. Hardware components are intelligently optimized and packaged with redundancies in torque and position sensors, electronic control units, motor windings as well as dual sets of vehicle power and communication connectors. In addition to hardware redundancies, Nexteer’s software is built for simultaneous, multi-path processing to further enhance the safety net.
“We innovate not only in what we do with the product, but how we do it with our processes and people. Timing and technical challenges pushed us to achieve new levels of performance – both with the product and on a personal and professional level among our team. It was a strong, cross-functional team effort both within Nexteer and at GM. Together, we truly operated on a day-to-day basis as a single unit pushing toward this innovation goal,” Lemanski said.
During the event, GM recognized 132 of its best suppliers from 17 countries who have consistently exceeded GM’s expectations, created outstanding value or introduced innovations to the company. GM recognized the most suppliers since debuting the Supplier of the Year event in 1992. More than 45 percent are repeat Supplier of the Year winners from 2016.
“This is an opportunity for General Motors to honor those suppliers who are truly the best of the best,” said Steve Kiefer, GM senior vice president, Global Purchasing and Supply Chain. “The automotive industry is transforming at an incredible rate. The relationships we have with our supply base means everything when it comes to delivering a strong vehicle lineup today and the cutting-edge vehicles and mobility services of tomorrow.”
