IGW keeps innovating

As you may know, the industrial gear market is one that is growing ever more complex and demanding. Indeed, the sizes of the gears as well as the level of finishing requested by our customers have increased over the years. To keep up with those demands and to ensure that we maintain our leading market position, investments need to be made from time to time. That’s why we are currently building an additional line containing a deburring robot in our Oostkamp plant.

Bigger and faster becomes the norm

Customers who come to us for gears mostly want two things: delivery reliability and a delivery period that’s as short as possible. Investing in quicker and bigger machines is a big aid in achieving those requirements. Aside from that, we have developed a new system involving cross-functional cooperation in teams rather than the classic system consisting of separate divisions. Working in this new way has allowed us to shorten the delivery period by 12 weeks, going from 30 down to 18.

To work faster, we will have our new FMS line (flexible manufacturing system) operational in June of this year in our Oostkamp plant. With this new line, our current line will be deduplicated. A robot will perform 80% of the deburring whereas the task was done manually for the full 100% in the past. That means that we will now be able to deburr at night as well since we couldn’t do so before. This automation will go a long way to increase the volumes we can produce in our Oostkamp plant. Through investments such as this one, we can maintain our leading position in the market and remain a reliable partner for our customers.