Made in Poland

In its plants in Wiechlice and Nowa Sól, NORD DRIVESYSTEMS manufactures innovative drive technology such as the highly efficient IE5+ motor and the DuoDrive integrated gear motor. This is made possible by advanced manufacturing technology and highly trained employees.

A dozen loosely wound bundles of copper wires lie on an aluminium plate. On one side they are each hooked into the teeth of a cylindrical device. A pneumatic guide reaches into the cylinder from above and pulls the copper wire bundles into the stack of sheets in a matter of seconds - thus producing a crucial intermediate product in the manufacture of stators for electric motors.

Beyond Global Standards

"We have fully automated the winding of the copper wires," explains Premysław Sulikowski, plant manager at the NORD factory in Wiechlice, Poland. "We are far ahead with this, global standard in the industry is still a long way off." In the international production network of NORD DRIVESYSTEMS, the site in western Poland is of particular importance, as this is where the company's highly efficient IE5+ motors are manufactured.

Together with Nowa Sól, approximately 19 miles away, Wiechlice forms a dual location that is characterized by its intelligent automated production technology and competent, highly trained employees. 220 women and men are employed in Wiechlice, roughly twice as many in the neighboring plant.

Automated, High-Tech Production

Two automated winding lines, each with an industrial robot feeding ten machines, form the center of stator production in Wiechlice. After automated winding, the stators are insulated and bandaged by hand by experienced specialists, then impregnated and finally assembled into the housings. The production facility consumes up to 2.5 tons of copper per month; 160,000 stators were manufactured here in 2022.

More than twice as many motors in sizes from 63 to 160 were assembled that year: 365,000 units. "We receive additional stators for this from our colleagues at the plant in Italy," says Sulikowski. "The rotors come from Nowa Sól or from Italy as well." NORD maintains a large factory in San Giovanni Persiceto near Bologna. Regular truck transports connect the Polish sites with Italy and the main plant in Bargteheide near Hamburg.

All Products Tested Three Times

In addition to the stator production and other pre-assemblies as well as the motor production, the testing department is crucial for the high quality standard in Wiechlice. "All products are tested three times at our plant: twice for the stator itself and once for each assembled motor," emphasizes Premysław Sulikowski. Another test is then carried out later at another plant when the motor is assembled with a gearbox to form a unit.

Founded in 2019, Wiechlice meets the most modern requirements for production sites. Work is carried out here on 14 production lines in two-shift operation. Due to increasing demand, including for IE5+ synchronous motors, the plant is currently being significantly expanded. A large hall extension will triple the hall area and also the production capacities from mid-2024. In the course of the new construction, deep drilling is also being carried out for the installation of a geothermal system, which will be able to heat the production halls in a CO2-neutral manner in the future. This construction project is of great importance within the framework of NORD DRIVESYSTEMS' sustainability strategy.

The overall accuracy of the gearbox depends on how precisely our gears are worked. Quality is therefore our top priority.

Delicately Balanced Intralogistics System

IE5+ motors from Wiechlice are then delivered to Nowa Sól, 19 miles to the north, where they are integrated into helical gear units andcombined to form the extremely efficient DuoDrive integrated gear motor units. In addition to the headquarters in Bargteheide in northern Germany, Nowa Sól is home to NORD DRIVESYSTEMS' second major worldwide gear unit assembly plant. Assembly manager Adam Strózyk supervises a total of 29 assembly lines here, on which around 10,000 gear units are manufactured each week.

To achieve this, his more than 100 assemblers work in two shifts. In the in-house paint shop, the gearboxes are coated with a protective layer of paint in three shifts. The two existing paint lines have just been supplemented by a third. "We paint the gearboxes either in the standard blue or silver colours or in any colour our customers want," emphasises Adam Strózyk.

In order to be able to afford these production capacities, the assembly workstations must be adequately supplied with the necessary parts. For this purpose, NORD has developed an intricately balanced intralogistics system: The inflow of material is organized via an 60-foot high-bay warehouse with 6,000 storage spaces and three large-dimension Kardex small parts cabinets; a semi-automatic outbound system is used to deliver the produced and tested gear units to other NORD sites or directly to the customers.

Decisive Benchmark: Quality

The quality of the gearboxes produced is also a decisive benchmark in Nowa Sól. Experienced employees manufacture them at modern manual assembly stations, and all gear units are carefully tested. In order to guarantee the outstanding quality standard, NORD also produces the components that are crucial for the precision of the gearboxes in-house: input and output gears as well as motor and pinion shafts.

Like oversized ice hockey pucks, the blanks made of various steel alloys lie in dozens of wooden or lattice boxes. From these, production manager Paweł Stasyszyn's machining department produces high-precision gears. They are shaped on lathes and milling machines and provided with the required gearing. After hardening by an external service provider, the gears are given their exact geometry during the final precision grinding. Engine and pinion shafts are manufactured on complete machining centers - in one clamping, which further increases the precision of the gear components.

Precise Gears, Precise Gearboxes

A total of 70 state-of-the-art turning, milling, and complete machining centers are in operation around the clock in three shifts Monday through Friday with Paweł Stasyszyn's team producing over three million parts per year.

"The entire accuracy of the gearbox depends on how precisely our gears are worked," states Stasyszyn. "Quality is therefore our first priority." This understanding finds its visible expression in the design of the hall layout. At the center of the mechanical processing is the test center, where the parts are tested. "We test every first part produced in a series as well as one from each shift," explains the production manager, who is also housed in the center of production with three process engineers who assist him. "Added to this are parts that have attracted attention on the production lines themselves." Around 2,000 hand-held measuring devices are available for this purpose at the processing machines, in order to subject the parts to an initial manual test.

In this way, machine operators, fitters, test engineers, and quality controllers all work together to achieve outstanding product quality, which benefits the worldwide users of NORD DRIVESYSTEMS gearboxes and motors.

Production of components for NORD gear units.

Nowa Sól

Production of NORD electric motors.

Wiechlice