Johnson Controls teams up with mattress manufacturer Harrison Spinks Ltd to create the 'ComfortThin' automotive seat concept
Johnson Controls, a global leader in automotive seating, overhead systems, door and instrument panels, and interior electronics, announced that it has formed a development relationship with luxury mattress manufacturer Harrison Spinks to integrate pocketed coil spring mattress technology into an automotive seat concept called ComfortThin. The thin profile seats replace conventional urethane foam pads with a 100 percent recyclable alternative, and provide a five to 20 percent weight reduction. This technology will be available for 2015 model year vehicles.
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'Innovative idea springs from factory fringes' - FT
On the fringes of the Harrison Spinks mattress factory in Leeds is a small workshop that Simon Spinks says is out of bounds to most visitors.
“We call this the toy shed,” confides Mr Spinks, the company’s managing director and a member of the family that has owned the 290-employee business since 1840.
Inside the workshop are several rows of novel machines for turning out new kinds of springs – including helical springs shaped like coils of DNA and even “endless” springs where hundreds of small springs laid next to each other are formed from one extremely long piece of steel wire.
It is in the toy shed where Mr Spinks, 42, who has worked for the company since the late 1980s, devised with the help of a small team of technical experts a new “Spinks spring” that is much smaller than the conventional pocket type that goes to form many mattresses.
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'Car seat maker eyes new mattress spring' - FT
An inventor from Yorkshire has made a breakthrough in a 500-year-old technology that one of the world’s biggest automotive components makers thinks could lead to “greener” motoring by significantly cutting the weight and carbon dioxide emissions of cars.
Simon Spinks, managing director and part owner of Harrison Spinks, a Leeds-based mattress maker, has teamed up with US-based Johnson Controls, the world’s biggest producer of car seats, which is evaluating his invention: a new kind of miniature coiled spring. Johnson Controls, which is also among the top 10 makers of car parts by sales, believes the new spring could revolutionise the production of car seats, construction of which has barely changed for half a century.
Not only could the springs cut the weight of cars and lead to lower carbon dioxide emissions by reducing fuel consumption but they could also make car seats easier to recycle by replacing the large amounts of polyurethane foam currently used in the products. Springs are made from lengths of steel wire, which is relatively easy to recycle.
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