UK testbed for sustainable gear manufacturing: scaling to Indian volume production

Dr Agnes Ragondet, Group Sustainability Director, Hewland/Hero Motors.

This paper presents a sustainability-driven manufacturing initiative that leverages a UK-based pilot facility to develop, test, and optimise sustainable technologies in gear manufacturing with the objective to enable scalable implementation in Indian high-volume production facilities.

UK gear manufacturing market benefits from a strong industrial heritage and highly skilled workforce [1]. A focus on high quality products and high end applications are key drivers of the UK sector [2].

The UK gear manufacturing market is part of a broader £1.3bn bearing and gear manufacturing industry. The precision gearbox market itself generated $30.3 million in 2023 and is projected to grow at 3.4 % CAGR through 2030 [3].

However, high operational costs, wastes, labour expenses and pressure from raw material price inflation limits the overall advantages of UK manufacturing [4, 5, 6].

Figure 1. The drivers of sustainable manufacturing

In addition, the nature of low volume and custom-designed market leads to higher operational costs, highlighting the demand for greater efficiency and optimisation in both design & manufacturing processes.

The global gear manufacturing market is projected to increase by USD 137.8 billion at 8.1 % CAGR over the 2024 – 2029 period [7]. The market growth is fuelled notably by industrial expansion and increasing demand for high-Performance transmission solutions across various sectors [8].

In India, price competitiveness is a major challenge for gear manufacturing, due to strong competition from low-cost producers abroad. Balancing competitive pricing with quality and profitability in highvolume production remains an ongoing challenge [9].

This paper demonstrates how a sustainability-driven approach to gear manufacturing can address these challenges and enhance efficiency using IoT and smart manufacturing technologies.

The initiative illustrates how implementing these practices within a controlled, low-volume manufacturing environment in the UK can facilitate the technology transfer to high-volume gear manufacturing industry in India.

Process monitoring and operational optimisation

Gear manufacturing is an energy-intensive process that generates significant amount of bi-product material waste.

On average at Hewland, a low volume manufacturing organisation, energy costs associated with gear and transmission production can account for up to 65 % of total factory energy costs, which includes heat treatment capability, while 40 % of the raw materials used in machining operations are lost as waste. In general, manufacturing sector is energy intensive and can consume up to 20 – 25 % of world’s total energy [10].

Additionally, frequent tooling changes, small batch sizes, and customized new designs greatly affect operational efficiency, with up to 35 % of cycle time attributed to indirect production activities such as tooling setup, programming adjustments, and part inspections.

Finally, historical operational standards can lead to a significant increase in downtime, accounting for up to 50 % of an asset’s total energy usage.

All these factors together contribute to a significant increase in the product’s carbon footprint. Figure 1 shows the drivers of sustainable manufacturing study.

Firstly, the case study involved integrating IoT and smart factory tools into each individual manufacturing asset to monitor and analyse productivity and efficiency through energy data combined with manufacturing operation management data.

It involved a physical energy monitoring and data collection device paired with a custom-developed intelligent tool for data processing and analysis.

The combined analysis of energy consumption data and manufacturing operations management software offered valuable insights into operational efficiency, revealing opportunities for both energy savings and performance improvement.

First key outcomes included:

• 20 % average asset downtime reduction
• 260,000 kWh reduction (16 % of annual consumption)
• 52tCO2e reduction
• Greater process standardisation
• Optimised operational cost prediction

The in-house developed smart factory tool delivered precise data on the status of each manufacturing operation, enabling its use as a powerful digital twin to correlate asset and operational costs, and facilitating easy transfer to high-volume manufacturing cost predictions.

Circular manufacturing strategies

The next phase of the study focused on exploring circularity opportunities in manufacturing. Given the large volume of swarf waste generated during operations, it was crucial to identify ways to minimize waste while creating opportunities for material reuse.

The case study focused on components requiring a central hole to be machined in the steel bar. Two turning operation methods were assessed:

• A conventional process where the entire hole was produced by cutting through the material, converting all removed material into swarf.
• A more sustainable process using an optimised tool path that cut around the hole’s perimeter, enabling the recovery of a solid steel piece that could be reused to manufacture another component.

The study revealed that cycle times could be reduced by 60 % to 90 %, depending on the hole size, cutting energy cost per operation by similar proportions, while waste generated per part decreased by up to 60 %.

Such simple but yet effective approach enables substantial material savings, particularly in high volume production. For instance, machining a 400cm3 piece of steel using the perimeter tool path would save 15tons of steel and 29tCO2e in a 5,000-part batch, allowing the recovered material to be reused for producing other components.

Sustainable design optimisation

The final phase of the study focussed on sustainable design opportunities, examining how design choices impact overall manufacturing costs, cycle times, material usage and product carbon footprint.

The component selected was a shaft with a primary wheel, originally manufactured as two separate parts welded together. This two-part design was compared with a redesigned single-part solution.

As shown in Table 1 the single-part design solution achieved a 51 % reduction in energy consumption, in-house cycle time and CO2e emissions, while material wastage during production decreased by 11 %.

Note: the overall cycle time and cost of the two-part solution was greatly increased due to an additional welding operation that also sub-contracted.

The single-part design solution needed revision to account for a greater gap between the gears to allow for grinding operation. Although this process would not be necessary for motorsport application, it is essential for EV application in order to reach NVH requirements. High volume machining operations such as power skiving and gear honing are also considered to reduce the gap to a minimum while the choice of gear type, spur vs helical, can also impact the required distance between the gears.

Table 1. Comparison of energy cost, material wastage and carbon footprint between 1 part and 2 part design solutions

Overall, this case study demonstrates various opportunities for a more efficient and sustainable gear manufacturing approach that can be easily transferred from low volume to high volume manufacturing context as summarised in Figure 2. While low volume context allows for quick and flexible development, the high volume implementation allows for greater savings and optimisation benefits.

Manufacturing and design decisions can be influenced by a sustainability approach to be more energy efficient, more cost effective and generating a lower carbon footprint of the product.

Figure 2. Process and benefits of low volume case study to high volume technology transfer

References
[1] The cost-benefit of manufacturing in the UK
[2] UK automotive manufacturing: facing up to the challenges of the future
[3] UK Precision Gearbox Market Size & Outlook, 2030
[4] https://www.manufacturingmanagement.co.uk/content/news/uk-manufacturing-challenges-make-uk-survey-findings
[5] https://www.cbi.org.uk/media-centre/articles/uk-manufacturing-struggles-to-regain-momentum-as-cost-pressures-mountand-orders-remain-weak-cbi-industrial-trends-survey-july-2025
[6] https://www.expressandstar.com/news/business/business-picks/2023/09/19/supply-raw-materials-and-import-costs-top-ukmanufacturing-concerns
[7] https://www.technavio.com/report/gear-manufacturing-market-industry-analysis#:~:text=Gear%20Manufacturing%20Market%20Size%202025,in%20this%20evolving%20market%20landscape.
[8] https://www.prnewswire.co.uk/news-releases/industrial-gearbox-market-to-reach-usd-37-1-billion-by-2029–key-trends-growth-drivers—valuates-reports-302394728.html#:~:text=Major%20Factors%20Driving%20the%20Growth,strong%20emphasis%20on%20energy%20efficiency.
[9] https://www.imarcgroup.com/india-gear-market
[10] https://zipdo.co/sustainability-in-the-manufacturing-industry-statistics/

Smart Chassis Meets Smart Powertrains

A Practical Guide to Integrated Motion Control in 2026 and Beyond

This whitepaper explains why chassis–powertrain integration is no longer optional, but a strategic imperative for OEMs and Tier 1s. It focuses on concrete use cases – torque vectoring with brake-by-wire, steer-by-wire with active suspension, and centralized vehicle motion control – and discusses the engineering methods, architectures and safety concepts required to master this integration.

A Long Journey from the First Hair-pin Stator Line to Continuous Flow Winding

Edoardo Freschi, EV-Traction Sales Director, IMA EV-TECH

It was early in 2009 when ATOP started developing the first fully automatic line to produce hair-pin stators. Being a medium-sized company and not having, at that time, the capacity to support such a wide range of solutions, it was necessary to make a choice between the well-known, state-of-the-art coil insertion technology or exploring the brand-new copper bar technology with a pioneering approach. With a focus on the future, the choice was to explore this new territory and today we can say the decision was the right one.

As has always been the case in over 30 years of IMA EV-TECH – ATOP history, process equipment must preserve some of the unique characteristics that have always distinguished our machines: they must be innovative, flexible and compact in design.

The main focus was on hair-pin forming process, considered the true key to the success of this new solution. The innovation requirement was met through the introduction of a CO₂ laser for enamel removal on the wire combined with a fully programmable 3D forming robot used to bend copper wire. This solution perfectly matched the second prerequisite of flexibility. In fact, like for the pin forming, all machines in the line had to be suitable for different products with varying dimensions, slot geometries, and conductors per slot.

The application of QCO (Quick Change Over) technology to the new machines in stage of development, appears as a perfect combination. New machines are born with the natural predisposition to receive different sets of tooling for different products. The idea was to have a complete tool installed in the machine with fixed references,requiring no fine-tuning or adjustments to start production. Given the high value of EV motor components, it was defined that, after all quality checks, the first part produced must be a good part. The presence of electric axes to control all process functions definitively helped engineers in their work.

With the experience gained in the electric motor manufacturing field, it was considered an added value to approach the third pre-requisite: compact design. We integrated the electrical and pneumatic cabinets inside the machine frame. Further on, we had chance to learn how automotive industry standards were different in this field. While Tier and Tier 2 customers accepted this solution, OEMs required a more conventional external electrical cabinet. To satisfy both philosophies, today both configurations are available.

In over 15 years of experience with copper bar stators for e-Mobility applications, we have grown our experience thanks to the scientific approach always applied even through a close cooperation of our R&D with universities. Nonetheless, events and reaction of the copper that initially appeared to be inexplicable, have gradually found their explanation. Experience taught us to define the copper “the alive material” because, like a chameleon is capable to change his characteristics so quickly and sometime without any apparent reasons.

Welding is keen while producing the hair-pin technology. From the very beginning the idea to use a mask to align the couple of wires was developed and applied. This solution was later abandoned in all those cases of high slot numbers and small diameters. Where it was preferred clamping by gripper. Today, the alignment by mask is made using a three-effect mask that allows to make tangential and radial wires alignment while providing axial containment. The new mask, thanks to its reduced thickness, perfectly meets the needs of extremely short wire leads, those known in Asia as “minipins”. This is not a novelty, since we already have high-capacity lines in serial production with wire terminals below 6 mm in straight path.

The current state of the art is the ATOP machines generation that represent the fourth generation of machines developed for hairpin stator technology. Maintaining the original pre-requisites, achievements of this latest generation, are the condensation of all experiences matured in those year, with higher process speed and productivity.

What about the future of e-mobility motor design? It is a widely shared opinion that hair-pin stators may represent a transitional solution toward a simpler and more cost-effective process.

Here at IMA EV-TECH, we continue to monitor developments and, just as we did 15 years ago, try to explore possible alternatives. Wave winding, as it stands today, presents clear limitations in terms of motor design constraints, lack of process control, cost, floor space occupation of the production lines and difficulties in achieving a fully automated process.

An interesting alternative to traditional wave winding is the CFW solution, acronym for Continuous Flow Winding. This technology was developed to meet the requirement of the motor from MAVEL. This already solved most of the criticality typical of a wave winding:

• Closed-gap inner diameter, because the insertion is made from outside
• Helicoidal slot profile, offering a well-distributed magnetic flow distribution and helps tremendously on having in a smooth wire insertion process
• Small waves development, that leads to compact footprint equipment. A complete line having the floor space occupation similar to an hair-pin stator line
• Low-height copper headers outside the slots, with crown height contained below 24 mm thanks to outer-slot insertion

Applications with Litz-wire have been developed in recent years, with flexible conductor used to wind single poles stators as well as rigid bars for hair-pin production. It is hard to define what the future will bring, but one thing is sure: IMA EV-TECH will be there supporting the growth of our customers.