With the opening of the newest building on its hydraulics manufacturing campus in Fountain Inn, S.C., Bosch Rexroth, whose U.S. headquarters is based in Charlotte, N.C., has doubled its production capabilities at the S.C. location. This addition makes the Fountain Inn campus the company’s largest hydraulics manufacturing site in the Americas.
The development of this building marks the largest investment to date by Bosch Rexroth in North America. Currently, five assembly lines and multiple state-of-the-art machining centers have been installed in the building for production of the company’s A10VO hydraulic pump, along with one line for vane motor assembly. The pump is used in a variety of applications, including mobile construction and agricultural machinery, mining, materials handling, and heavy industries, such as steel and automotive production. This new facility on the Fountain Inn campus, which will bring 160 new jobs to the area, is part of Bosch Rexroth’s plan to invest $80 million over five years to expand production here.
The company says the Fountain Inn facility operates using a lean manufacturing and continuous quality improvement system called the Bosch Production System, which is used by Bosch production operations worldwide to ensure “the highest levels of product quality.” Along with the Fountain Inn expansion announcement, Bosch Rexroth also noted its $420,000 monetary and equipment donation to the Greenville (South Carolina) Technical College to support the school’s hands-on training program.
Other recent programs contributing to the company’s growth in North America include the expansion of its Charlotte, N.C., linear motion and assembly products facility and a new Houston service center dedicated to serving Gulf of Mexico oil and gas exploration.
Bosch Rexroth’s announcement is just one of the many recent announcements unfolding over the past few years about the growth of manufacturing in the U.S. Southeast. See Automation World recent coverage of this topic here.
