Finding areas to grow during down years is a sign of a healthy company. One growth area for Lincoln Industries in 2020 was the assembly area. For over a decade, Lincoln Industries has manually assembled service laced wheels for OE motorcycles. Because of the service program's success, an opportunity arose to expand the wheel assembly area significantly, making Lincoln Industries the largest supplier of spoked wheels in North America.
Lincoln Industries created a cross-functional team of engineers with people from operations and quality to tackle the challenge. With 50,000 new assemblies per year, Innovation Manager Adam Matzner and Project Integration Engineer Rian Suiter knew that the current resources and processes were not ideal. They needed to design new manufacturing tooling specifically for this project. The team innovated a semi-automatic process and a machine that positions parts exactly where they need to be every time.
"The machine knows which fasteners need tightening on each wheel and will present it to the operator with instructions on the screen. It also controls the gun's torque and records the number of rotations so no fasteners will be hit twice," said Matzner. "It’s great to be able to take all the knowledge we’ve established and scale it up for an impactful project that’s quite meaningful to Lincoln Industries and its customers.”
Adding adjacent processes has helped Lincoln Industries grow over the years, and 2021 will be no different. Technical assemblies will continue to grow as customers look to simplify supply chains and reduce lead time. This complex project’s success demonstrates Lincoln Industries’ ability and confidence to develop more new business in assembly.
Read more stories from Lincoln Industries in our 2020 Annual Report.
