Bodine Electric Co. manufactures electric motors, gearmotors and controls.

Premier Business Partners:

Renco Encoder

One of the biggest challenges a company like Bodine Electric Co. continues to encounter is staying competitive in today’s global economy. The Chicago-based manufacturer of electric motors, gearmotors and controls elected to fight this battle by sourcing components globally.

“We do source in Asia, and our strategy is to maintain control of our processes so we can guarantee our customers are getting exactly what they expected,” President John Bodine says. “We’ve taken a strategy where if we think it adds value to the product, we try to find lower-cost sourcing options. If it is one of the things we consider to be our core competency, then we will continue to do it ourselves.”

Bodine Electric has been in business since 1905 when the Bodine brothers produced their first electric motor for a dental drill manufacturer. Since then, the company says its products have earned a reputation as the standard for performance where reliability and dependability are essential.

“Our products are engineered for maximum reliability and to provide a minimal amount of unplanned downtime,” Bodine says. “If production line or machine downtime is not acceptable in a process, then it is very likely that you will find a Bodine motor, gearmotor or control system in it.”

Still family owned, Bodine has headquarters and a manufacturing facility in Chicago, as well as additional facilities in Peosta, Iowa, and supply-chain operations in Suzhou, China.

Bodine and Michael Gschwind, vice president of sales and marketing, recently spoke with Manufacturing Today to discuss the markets Bodine Electric serves, how the company controls quality while outsourcing to Asia and its latest licensed technology, the direct drive e-TORQ motor.

Manufacturing Today: What markets do Bodine Electric’s products serve?
John Bodine: We have a very diverse customer base. Our products are used in a lot of medical applications, laboratory instruments, packaging equipment, photocopiers, industrial automation and in-home mobility applications, like stair lifts. We have a significant amount of business in the U.K., some business in China, Taiwan and Singapore, as well.
Michael Gschwind: About 30 percent of what we sell goes through distribution, and the rest is directly sold to OEMs.

MT: What does your company do best?
JB: About two-thirds of the products we manufacture are customized in some way. Our experienced engineering staff works often directly with our customers and helps modify standard
products to add value. And our engineered solutions contribute directly to the value that our customers offer to their customers.

MT: How do you maintain quality?
JB: We started off going through middlemen and people who had relationships with suppliers in Asia or other parts of the world. We would carry significant inventory through this process. As we got more experienced in sourcing globally, we brought people on staff who travel to China and who speak Chinese.
MG: As we’re outsourcing parts, we’re finding cost-effective suppliers. But our biggest concerns are managing quality and getting across the same quality expectations.

We now have people on the payroll in China who help us find suppliers and work with them, and we send our own manufacturing team members to meet with these new vendors to help make sure the right quality systems are in place for the parts we buy, to maintain the same experience for our customers.

MT: Are there any new developments for Bodine Electric?
JB: We have a new technology we’ve licensed called e-TORQ, which is a direct drive brushless DC servo motor. This unique motor design offers perfect motion quality with no cogging even at very low speeds.

It has 10 times the peak torque vs. running torque, and it has a very flat profile, which is important in some applications.

MT: Was this new product developed in response to a specific customer need?
MG: There are different levels of customization, such as adding parts to the motor or adding another feature, which are mostly mechanical in nature.

Other customization comes from working with customers from a performance level, making sure the winding and motor itself meets their motion requirements. Those are the kind of different things we solve with our standard product mix.

The e-TORQ motor has many new attributes that most of our current products don’t address. It has a unique, extremely short motor housing and it can deliver very smooth motion even at low speeds. In many cases when customers want low-speed operations, they use gearmotors. A conventional gearmotor’s downside is that the lubricant can potentially leak out over time, and the metal gears will eventually also wear out. The e-TORQ motor addresses both of these design challenges.