As the speed of innovation in the automotive industry quickens, assemblers at Rhenus SML in Genk, Belgium, do all they can to keep pace. Rhenus workers painfully learned the importance of this five years ago when Ford Motor Co. shut down its Genk plant, which sat adjacent to Rhenus’s facility.
The plant had operated for 50 years and produced some 14 million vehicles that contained parts made by thousands of Rhenus employees. Today, a different automotive OEM is establishing itself at the location and building a new vehicle that has state-of-the-art axles made by Rhenus.