Aptiv Recognizes 2021 Innovators
Innovation does not happen in a vacuum. Each innovator collaborates with a team of experts, building on the work of others to push the state of the art forward and move us all to a brighter future.
At Aptiv, we are committed to working as one team, making our ideas better and making each other better. We elevate the diverse voices within our engineering community, so that as our products make mobility safer, greener and more connected, they have the strength that comes from all of those points of view.
We understand that innovation is the key to our success, and recognizing the contributions of our innovators is important to us. Recently, Aptiv’s leaders celebrated the best of the best with the Aptiv Innovation Awards. We inducted seven new members into the Aptiv Innovation Hall of Fame and promoted five others to a higher level of recognition in the Hall of Fame. Their plaques will hang in our technical centers in Shanghai, China; Troy, Mich.; and Wuppertal, Germany.
The awards
Vincent Regnier is the 2021 Innovator of the Year, recognized for his innovative approach to supplemental restraint system (SRS) connectors used with airbags. Regnier developed 22 patents for SRS, and the SRS spring lock design he pioneered combines high performance, low cost and design flexibility for a safety-critical component.
We recognized two groups in our Team Innovation Awards. The first award went to a 21-member team from across Aptiv that completed a holistic electrical/electronic architecture study for a customer and demonstrated the value of applying Smart Vehicle Architecture™ and zone control principles to its platform. The group modeled the entire architecture and effectively showed how SVA™ could substantially reduce cost and weight while providing other benefits.
The second team award went to a group that acted with urgency over the past year, quickly adapting to supply chain changes to redesign two products for a customer based in Asia. The group took just eight weeks to produce wireless device chargers based on a new design and 12 weeks to produce an EV charger with a new design.
Our innovation award recipients show us by their example what we can do when we work together toward a common goal. All of us at Aptiv draw inspiration from their accomplishments and take pride in the role we play in furthering our mission toward a safer, greener and more connected future.
