A WORCESTERSHIRE design and development company is taking a major role in the improvement of children's car seats.

JMDA, which is headquartered in the village of Bishampton, near Pershore and is a global child car seat design and development specialist, has partnered with ESI Group of Paris, a pioneer and world-leading solution provider in virtual prototyping software and services for manufacturing industries.

The aim is to enable child car seat manufacturers to reach new levels of technical understanding and to achieve design excellence. The main benefit of combining child car seat design and virtual prototyping, through the use of ESI’s virtual seat solution, is to virtually test the proposed design and gain additional information about product performance and compliance in a test situation, before committing to major investments. The seat and its restraint system can be optimised early on in the design phase to reach higher performance levels, while reducing product development and manufacturing costs altogether.

Derrick Barker, managing director of JMDA,said: "Our alliance with ESI Group is an important landmark in JMDA’s history, marrying together our vast experience in child restraint design and development with state-of-the-art simulation software solution. It opens up fresh opportunities to innovate, prove new concepts, test the limits and establish sound due diligence evaluations for new designs. We can also research the impact of planned changes in regulations to further support the industry. Working together with ESI, we have more than 65 years of combined technical capability which we will continue to use to help evolve product design and ultimately make child car seats even safer.”

Award winning JMDA is about to celebrate its 25th year in business and continue to expand their UK head office and its second office in Shanghai, China.