With all that has been chronicled regarding the trend toward OEM outsourcing, it's easy to believe that most equipment manufacturers have shopped out large portions of their sub-assembly work. Seeking to capitalize further on this trend, a new gearbox assembly operation has been established to serve the higher volume, smaller size assembly requirements of off-highway OEMs.
Drive Systems, Inc., located in a 6000 sq.ft. facility in Antigo, Wis., traces its roots directly to both the gear and gearbox industries through its two principal policymakers. Bill Sims, Drive System's president, was formerly with Cotta Transmission and Terrell Gear Drives, while Eric Schumann, a financial partner in Drive Systems, is also the president and owner of Merit Gear Corp.
"The springboard for Drive Systems was the fact that Merit Gear customers had begun expressing the desire to buy an assembled gearbox, as opposed to doing their own work," explained Sims. "From the beginning, our actual and anticipated accounts are the companies that are already buying the gears, but would prefer to buy one ready-to-use product, rather than the multiple components needed to assemble these units."
Initially the company will focus on assembly operations for a variety of geared products that have been previously designed and built by OEMs. These will include special motor drives and right angle gearboxes, as well as worm and planetary drives. "One of our first products, for example, is a very special, hydraulically driven two-speed planetary gear reducer," said Sims.
As the company develops, Sims added, Drive Systems would offer drive packages which might incorporate hydraulic motors and pumps or brakes. Sales and engineering support will be a combination of factory-direct and manufacturers representatives.
"The concept of Drive Systems is to eventually be able to control the engineering input for the drive package design and assembly," said Schumann. Stressing that the new company is an entity completely separate from Merit Gear, Schumann said Drive Systems will compete for the best component prices on everything from gears and shafts, to bearings, housings and seals.
"Right now, by being an assembly operation, we're going to focus on being a very efficient operation," Sims noted. "We won't have manufacturing as an issue. It's white walls and a very clean operation - no chip-making anywhere, We'll be purchasing the components of our assemblies from extremely high-tech, high-quality machining houses - buying from companies that specialize in that size, that type - whatever it may be. If we are asked to quote on a certain volume, then we'll go to those companies that specialize in that volume and that specific size."
Schumann added, "Merit Gear has done a good job as a gear manufacturer, which is basically a raw material conversion process. Whereas with gear assembly, the gearbox has various components coming together in a particular fashion at some future point of time. It's a different system.
"At Drive Systems we can specialize in assembly and really make that cost effective and then start looking at design. It has been interesting to separate the manufacturing of gears from assembly, inasmuch as the two companies are in more of a niche at either end of the process."
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