Paul-Henri Matha, DVN COO & Lighting General Editor
After GTB week in Torino, I visited Magna’s facility at Rivoli. Last time I was there was in 2006 for the development of the Renault Scenic rear foglamp; time flies!
Magna’s lighting team at Rivoli is about 5,300 of Magna’s worldwide 174,000 employees. Magna have seven R&D centres dedicated to lighting, 12 lighting manufacturing plants worldwide. Their global lighting R&D staff itself is around 320 strong, split among North America; Europe; Brazil; India, and China.
In Europe, 70 engineers are located in Rivoli/Torino and 65 in Ostrava (formerly a Wipac team; Magna bought the Ostrava Wipac facility some years ago).
The former Rivoli plant has been transformed into an engineering Centre of Excellence and aftermarket service hub. A new plant about 20 km away in Moncalieri produces lighting products.
It’s been quite an amazing evolution in the last 20 years for Magna lighting; they make headlamps, rear lamps, and complete front and rear facias with film and UV coating capabilities.
I also took the opportunity during my visit to test their latest ADB module—it offers very good performance in the bad weather conditions we encountered during the night drive.
I was invited by Frank Hallitschke, Magna Mechatronics-Mirrors-Lighting’s VP of Global Engineering. His team is a very skilled and young team, with a widely international background—Italy, Germany, USA, Spain, Czechia. After the visit, we had an open interview:
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