Winona PVD Coatings takes quality so seriously that out of the almost 1.5 million wheels shipped in the past ten years, the company has seen the number of returns in the single digits.
The company coats wheels with a bright finish for Ford’s F-150 along with Hyundai, Nissan and BMW. The company focuses on quality, continuous improvement, and high-technology manufacturing—the coatings process is so automated that wheels are not touched by human hands in the six hours it takes to produce them. In the past year, the company tripled its output and workforce.
“Quality standards for the automotive industry are very demanding and only the best players can participate in that market,” says Tom Foley, president of Dynavac, a supplier for the company. “And Winona can certainly do that.”
THE BEGINNING
The company was founded in 2006. Back then it was located near Winona Lake, in Warsaw, Indiana, a town known as the orthopedic capital of the world, a few hours outside of Chicago, down the road from a Medtronic plant.
The beauty of the Warsaw location is that there is plenty of room to expand, as CEO Scott Dahl points out, and they will. They currently have two buildings with three lines total, and the second building, with a chandelier made of Ford F-150 wheels, is undergoing a 83,000 square foot addition that will be completed in October.
The PVD (physical vapor deposition) coating provides the reliability of a painted wheel but the look of chrome and saves one to two pounds of weight on each wheel.
“Obviously quality is first and foremost of what we do,” says Rick Groom, director of operations at Winona. “A defect equals a reject.”
To prevent rejects, the company monitors defects closely, takes immediate corrective actions, and then looks for a root cause. The process involves cleanliness, checklists and standardization. To that end, the high-volume lines two and three are identical in how they look and run. Line one handles with smaller, aftermarket orders.