WEG has achieved the landmark manufacturing figure of 100 million motors produced. The company is marking the occasion by installing the hundredth million machine, an IEC 225 S/M frame size motor - manufactured as part of WEG's Extra Long Life range - in its company Museum in Jaragua do Sul, Brazil.
"We took 45 years to produce our first 100-million motors. However, we will take less than 10 years to double that number," said Decio da Silva, CEO and president of WEG. "This projection takes into account the yearly average growth that WEG has enjoyed over the last few years, which is about 25%. The achievement of this manufacturing milestone ably demonstrates how technological improvements result in higher productivity, enabling manufacturing entities to achieve more output in shorter time periods."
To put this in context, in WEG's first year of operation, 1961, the company produced 146 motors, increasing to 5000 the following year. After 10 years, total production had increased to 200,000. In 2005, over 8 million motors were produced in all WEG manufacturing plants worldwide, including Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Portugal and China. Even with its present record levels of production, WEG is not standing still. The company is currently in the middle of its largest investment in manufacturing to date, spending over US$500m to more than double the capacity of its industrial park in Brazil - already the largest single manufacturing site in the world.
While 60 percent of the new space is devoted to the production of electric motors, substantial additional investment is also being pumped-in to support rapid growth in WEG's other major product areas such as generators, drives, soft starts, control and switchgear, transformers, and industrial paints and varnishes. These products are key to WEG's strategic plan of becoming one of the world's leading suppliers of automation components and systems. WEG's determination in this respect is underlined by the company's recent acquisition of a new manufacturing plant in China. The acquisition is designed to bring WEG closer to its Asian customers, ensuring optimised lead times in an increasingly demanding market.
