Gears for industry IG Watteeuw

GEARS FOR INDUSTRY

With 60 years of experience, know how and innovation, IG Watteeuw International NV provides gears, components and gear solutions to a broad range of industries.

Founded in 1949 by Alfons Watteeuw, Industrial Gears Watteeuw, today headquartered in Oostkamp, Belgium, is specialised in manufacturing gears, components and solutions around the globe. The company has production sites in Belgium, Czech Republic, Romania and the People’s Republic of China. Its principal focus is on low and medium lotsizes for railway, wind, marine, agriculture, compressor, aerospace, and lithography.

Today Watteeuw is a member company of the Gears Division of the Belgian BMT Group, an industrial, family-owned holding company with operations in glass and gears technology; It comprises several companies which are global market leaders in their fields. BMT Group’s aim is to achieve continuous profitable growth in all its divisions.

Whenever unique gear or component solution is required, Watteeuw comes to mind. It provides individualised gear and component solutions to enhance the business of OEMs, gearbox-leaders and the spare part market. The company’s customers can rely on top quality products, individual customer service, research and development support and logistic integration in their supply chain.

To quickly respond to global demand, Watteeuw’s production plants worldwide are all specialized in gear, shaft and assembly activities, including turning, hobbing, shaping, shaving, grinding, heat- and surface treatments and quality control.

The company’s portfolio of High quality and unique gears up to 2 meters in diameter are manufactured through state of the art ecological and lean processes. All gfear production is completely vertically integrated, including heat-treatment.

Global production

Watteeuw’s production network is geared up to serve different markets in the best possible way, and that means managing market-oriented manufacturing units focused on lean manufacturing principles. Watteeuw believes production units that specialise in serving different sections of the market not only offer greater flexibility in production but also allow it to respond to changing market conditions in the most cost-effective way. The factory in Suzhou, China, for example, manufactures and assembles components, gears and transmissions. It started as a joint venture with the local manufacturer Amtech Precision Machinery Co. Ltd in 2001, but Watteeuw acquired 100 per cent of the venture at the beginning of 2006

The facility in Fraser, Michigan, is largely an assembly plant and distribution centre for transmissions, whereas the factory in Iasi, Romania, is an integrated supplier of machined components and finished gears. The inauguration of the Romanian facility in 1998 was seen as something of pioneering move for a Belgian manufacturing company but it proved to be an excellent low-cost solution.

Watteeuw’s Czech subsidiary, IG Watteeuw ČR s.r.o., was founded in 1996, originally under the name of BMT ČR s.r.o. used until 2006, with the main focus on the production of gearbox components and gearbox assembly.

In the first four years, gearbox production prevailed over gearbox assembly, but from 2000, the ratio of manufactured parts to assembled gearboxes started to change markedly thanks to the contracts the company won for gearbox deliveries for railway, tramway and metro train manufacturers.

The world-renowned manufacturer of train sets, Siemens has become its biggest customer. It also supplies many other major customers in the rail industry including: Bombardier, Alstom France, Alstom China, CAF, Elin, Hitachi, Lucchini, Ansaldobreda, Mitsubishi Electronic, Vossloh etc. It also supplies Leitner (mountain cableway manufacturer), Airbus (aircraft manufacturer) and farming machine manufacturers. n