“What makes me leave home with enthusiasm at 5 a.m. every day is the team I work with.”

Hi, Caroline! Give us a sense of who you are, as a person, and as an IEE employee.

I am a 40-year-old French woman, mommy of two, Zélie and Edgar. I see myself as a dynamic, optimistic, independent and demanding person. I work as a generic System Engineer for IEE in the Automated Driving business line.

Why did you decide to work for IEE in this field?

IEE has always been very active in the automotive area, promoting safety and comfort sensing solutions. As a child, I used to watch car documentaries on the television with my dad and was absolutely fascinated with the topic. Little did I know then that years down the road I would be visiting the Aston Martin and McLaren car manufacturing plants thanks to my job. At 23, I graduated with a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, U.S. I started to look for my first job and wanted to thrive in an international environment and luckily, my path took me to IEE. It was my first job interview ever, and bingo! Years later, I am still here.

How does your daily work look like and what are the challenges?

It is no joke when I say that no two days are ever the same. My challenges are various, but all exciting. On the one hand, I lead the cost optimization procedure for the Hands Off Detection (HOD) sensor mat – IEE’s highlight product for supporting assisted and automated driving functions, from purchasing to production. I also look for improvement opportunities for our HOD system. Add to this supporting the development of new production processes, purchasing activities of new materials or developing the automated driving products of tomorrow and you have a good view of how busy and diverse my daily professional life is.

What do you like most about your job?

I thoroughly enjoy working with different departments within IEE. As such, I relate to material sciences, manufacturing, simulation, purchasing, testing, quality, hardware and so on. Together, we never stop trying, again and again, not giving up until we achieve our targets as a team.

I also like the fact that I learn every day, I can work autonomously as well and I have a trustful boss, which makes the entire working experience so rewarding. But above all, what truly makes me leave home at 5h15am every day with enthusiasm is being part of this team I work with! 

Do you think IEE gave you the opportunity to experience something you could not have anywhere else?

Thanks to my responsibilities within IEE, I had the chance to work closely with IEE Korea for more than 10 years, which opened for me a new world and a culture I knew nothing about previously. I thus discovered some wonderful, hardworking colleagues with a very strong team spirit and a deep sense of respect. We’ve worked on challenging international/global projects which often meant long working evenings and even weekends, but the compensation came through pleasant after-work meals and stories that strengthened our bonds. I count these people among my friends since then and will always be grateful to IEE for having met them.

“IEE is not only a work place for me, it is where I built and consolidate my career every day.”

Hello, Junfeng! What brought you to IEE (and to Luxembourg)?

After I finished my doctoral degree in Leuven, Belgium, I worked as a technical consultant for nearly 5 years for a German automotive consulting company with worldwide customer projects. After that, I thought it was time for me to take a break, focus on a more specific area, and find a better work-life balance.

IEE was no stranger to me at that time. I had previously seen IEE’s presentations and products that enhance the vehicle and road safety on the Internet, exhibitions and in the social media. That made a lasting impression on me. Their profile and activities were a perfect match to my educational background and when I finally received an offer from IEE I remember thinking: I have found my dream job!

Also, Luxembourg happens to be a small but pleasant country to live in, very diverse and family-friendly, accommodating many foreigners and offering numerous advantages. All things considered, I seized the opportunity and decided to join IEE in Luxembourg.

As an ECU Development Engineer, tell us what your daily work within IEE looks like.

In the Hardware department, I oversee customer requests, supplier requirements/specifications and IEE internal requirements. Moreover, I create specifications and conclusive documents for the department leaders to help them make the most appropriate decisions.

To give you an example, once IEE acquires a new customer, the Purchasing and Sales teams need to gather quotation information so that we can later provide the customer with an accurate estimate for the costs involved. For the ECU hardware design, I relate with different departments to break down the respective customer specification, incorporate it into the IEE hardware specifications to ensure that the Hardware Designers have all the right elements. I must keep track and follow up on what is happening in this loop, review simulation and measurement results and re-adapt where necessary. And then wrap everything together to finalize our specification based on internal and customer feedback.

What are the aspects of your job that you appreciate the most?

First and foremost, I like being able to contribute to bringing outstanding results for our customers – it is a team effort. I take pride in having very good working relationships and in being surrounded by dynamic, motivated, talented people. Also, I always learn something new. I feel very grateful for all these.

What do you find most challenging in your role and responsibilities?

How to turn customer requirements into a specification that meets the needs of all stakeholders? This means that the specification must be reliable, executable, testable and cost-effective – all combined, if possible. This is not always an easy task.

Besides, I am often involved in communicating with different departments within IEE: sales, system, software, quality, and ECU hardware design team. The external communications mainly involve customers, technical teams, quality teams, etc. Therefore, certain communication skills are needed to get the desired results. What is interesting is that each customer is different and unique, their specification/requirement are different, and so are their cultures and mentalities. This, as well as relating with various people from so many departments, makes things rather challenging. But also rewarding and enriching at the end of the day.

How do you feel IEE influences your career path and what do you think you have learned most?

IEE is not only a work place for me, it is where I built and consolidate my career every day. It has allowed me to use my educational background and experience, put them into practice and take them to a different level.

It also keeps its promise to satisfy my never-ending thirst for knowledge. On top of the technical knowledge updates, I have learned how to communicate more effectively with people, how to work in a team, how to better manage myself, how to drive results and manage the process of getting there to (almost) perfection. And there is still so much to learn…

“At IEE, we do not shy away from business opportunities that may initially look niche, and we recognize their potential for growth. We always strive to give a tangible meaning to our company slogan “A sense for innovation” that translates into viable solutions for the industry.”

Thierry, you have been working for IEE for over 20 years now. What is IEE and what is your role within the company?

IEE is specialised in sensing solutions for various markets. Automotive is our biggest market, but we also provide sensors for building management or medical & healthcare applications, based on various sensing technologies.

My core task is to monitor and analyse worldwide evolutions related to vehicle regulations or vehicle safety assessments (e.g. NCAP vehicle safety ratings). I represent IEE in the corresponding technical working groups, and share my findings with our Business Lines, Business Accelerators and the sales team. My work helps IEE to better understand the future customer needs and to develop the appropriate sensing solutions that will be required in the coming years. In addition to those regulatory tasks, I manage our Marketing & Communications team.

What do you see as the biggest challenge in your work?

I develop strategies to make our interests heard, and a constant challenge is that one has to accept these are often mid- to long-term activities. A quick success is rather the exception than the rule, especially when it comes to novel vehicle safety functions. It can easily take 15-20 years from the introduction of a new technology until it finds its way into the mass market. So, often, it takes some perseverance to achieve one’s goals!

What are you particularly proud of?

My work contributes to saving lives, and that’s something I think I can be proud of. Two examples: Seat belt reminders are known to reduce crash fatalities and injuries, as they increase the seat belt wearing rates. I have been a key industry representative in the United Nations working group that created a regulation for seat belt reminder systems. Such systems will become mandatory on the front seats of new vehicle types from September 2019 onwards in the EU, Japan, South Korea and other countries.

Another topic that I’ve been dealing with since quite a while is children dying of in-vehicle heatstroke. I’ve been monitoring and analysing this issue for more than 10 years. IEE has finally found a solution to detect even sleeping infants who are left unattended in a vehicle. So, I now strongly hope that VitaSense – our dedicated product – will considerably help save children’s lives.

What do you most like about your job?

The fact that I am continuously involved in new topics. When I started to work for IEE, the key vehicle safety topic was passive safety (reduction of fatalities). Then active safety (prevention or mitigation of crashes) gained in importance. Today, the topics of assisted and automated driving are strongly in the regulatory focus. And the various worldwide NCAP’s also tend to evolve at an increasing pace. No year is ever the same, and in each of these areas there are and have been opportunities for IEE. On top, attending international working groups allows me to meet people from all around the world, which is a very valuable personal experience.

IEE pioneered the development of occupant presence detection sensors more than 25 years ago. Since then, we have developed various vehicle interior sensing solutions based on different technologies. We have a history of being “first to market” with innovative solutions: Child Seat Presence and Orientation Detection (CPOD), capacitive occupant classification (BodySense), capacitive “hands-off” detection (HOD). And with VitaSense, we now have another promising technology in the pipeline.

In the non-automotive markets, we also realised major innovations: our 3D MLI sensor for building management had been honoured for its benchmark performance. At IEE, we do not shy away from business opportunities that may initially look niche, and we recognize their potential for growth. We always strive to give a tangible meaning to our company slogan “a sense for innovation” that translates into viable solutions for the industry.