SEW Eurodrive has completed a move to a large, new, purpose built plant in Normanton, West Yorkshire, just a few miles from its old site.
The new high-tech building, designed by architects AEDAS, is designed not just for production, service and storage, but also as an open house for customers. It features a permanent working exhibition demonstrating all of the company’s products, along with a range of training and meeting rooms to cater for all requirements.
Mark Holmes, SEW Eurodrive’s managing director, who headed up the management team that oversaw the move, said, “We’re actively encouraging customers to come and see us here and to use our facilities. A whole section of the building was designed with customers in mind so that they can see our products on show in a dedicated demonstration area, and make use of our training facilities and meeting rooms.”
The new 10,000m2 plant allows the lean assembly of standard product in a controlled environment with increased capacity of about 50% over the previous site. A storage area with over £2.8m in computer controlled stock enables SEW Eurodrive to despatch orders quickly and efficiently so that customers are never kept waiting.
With the extra space, SEW Eurodrive has installed two ten tonne gantry cranes and can now offer repairs to bigger industrial gearboxes of up to 20 tonnes in weight. Additionally, the company has invested in a 300 tonne press, the size of a single decker bus, that has the capability to press gears 2.5m in diameter with shafts of up to 10m long.
Karl Rigg, SEW Eurodrive’s UK service manager, commented, “Our reputation has been built on our ability to repair gearboxes cost effectively, reliably and quickly. At the end of the day we don’t want a customer’s gearbox in our plant for any longer than necessary and every day there will be gearboxes coming in and then going back out again repaired on the same day. Now we’ve got the capability to easily provide a service to customers with extremely large gearboxes, in sectors like steel, mineral extraction and aggregates. The ability to assemble and load test large industrial drive packages is also a big advantage in the new facility.”
