As the industry responds to customer demand for style variants and niche models, with shorter development times, Pilkington Automotive helps customers engineer value into vehicle glazing - cutting costs in parallel with product enhancement.

The NSG Group is one of the world's leading manufacturers of glass and glazing systems in three major business areas: Architectural Glass Products, Automotive and Technical Glass. Founded in 1918, NSG Group acquired the leading UK-based glass manufacturer Pilkington plc in June 2006.

High quality glass production starts with the float process, developed by Pilkington and now the industry standard. Automotive glass production includes pre-processing, toughening, laminating, encapsulation, extrusion and assembly, adding functionality.

At the heart of the world's glass industry is the float process - invented by Sir Alastair Pilkington in 1952 - which manufactures clear, tinted and coated glass for buildings, and clear and tinted glass for vehicles.

Vehicle build shows long-term industry growth to be around 2.1 per cent a year on average. But for glazing this is only part of the story - other demand drivers play an important part, both in terms of volume, and importantly, value.

Let the mixture digest for a time - and you are well on the way to making one of the world's most important materials. This is the basic recipe for float glass, one of the greatest of all industrial process inventions, comparable with Bessemer's innovations in steel manufacturing.

Take a glimpse into the NSG Group's technology..... adding value through innovation. NSG Group technology is all around you, yet often unnoticed because of the perfection of transparency it brings to today's glass products.

Watch the magic of this science-based process begins to unfold, in a series of stages on a float line that may be nearly half a kilometre long. Raw materials enter at one end. From the other, plates of glass emerge, cut precisely to specification, at rates as high as 6,000 tonnes a week. In between lie six high integrated stages...

Safety within Automotive is shifting from damage reduction to proactive accident prevention using Advanced Driver Assistant Systems (ADAS). Our windscreens are purpose-built to integrate camera and sensor systems to support the industry as it moves towards autonomous driving.

The increased requirements being placed by the VMs on the glass suppliers favours the 'Global Three' OE glazing alliances in terms of the industry's need for: technical capabilities - shaping, optics, design feasibility/simulation