THE CHALLENGE

The C.E. White Company tests, manufacturers and sells commercial, transit and school bus seating.  Its R&D lab exposes bus seats to varying impacts, evaluating and analyzing the energy absorption characteristics of each seat.  Because these seats are made for the general public, including children, C.E. White has to meet strict federal motor vehicles guidelines as well as all state safety standards and regulations on its impact testing equipment. 

Impact tests are critical to C. E. White’s business for validating seat design performance and demonstrating competitive advantages with its products. Test system consistency and stability during set-up and operation are vital for obtaining valid, repeatable data. However, C. E. White’s system was weakening in those areas, which meant multiple tests had to be repeated to obtain valid data, wasting valuable product development time and manpower.

To avoid this repeat testing, the company hoped to update its Impact Test Station with a new design and approached MAGNET for assistance. The company also wanted a more flexible design to allow the testing area to accept various-sized seat configurations and orientations and set new industry benchmarks for the company to maintain its competitive advantage.

THE APPROACH

The goal was to provide C.E. White with an innovative new product design capable of not only adapting to the changing form of the seats, but also of capturing accurate and real time data from the testing stations.  MAGNET engineers researched and designed a new product with a mechanical impact testing device that could easily adapt to accept a wide range of product mix.  The system that was designed has minimized safety hazards and eases the process by which the system can repeatedly perform its tests.  By eliminating set-up and operational instabilities, the MAGNET engineers standardized each test to significantly increase accuracy at each pass. 

The newly designed impact test system is user friendly, expandable to various sizes and configurations as well as to federal requirements.  The new product design offers varying degrees of processed information on command.  MAGNET was able to validate the prototype design in order to create a new product that encompassed all of the testing needs for C.E. White.

CUSTOMER QUOTE

“MAGNET's new product design capabilities are terrific and met with the constraints we needed to comply with federal motor vehicle safety standards and guidelines as well as state regulations. I know that we will call on MAGNET again for any future projects we have.”
Scott Hiler - Manager, Research and Development

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