Monterrey Investment Improves Efficiency, Cuts Lead Times
A major investment in new equipment has positioned Stucki de Mexico to handle increased business from railcar manufacturers in Mexico and throughout North America.
A shot blasting cabinet, powder coating line, and robotic welding line were installed in late 2025 to improve efficiency by implementing a one-piece flow production line for hopper gates.
“The line is designed to produce any gate at high output rates with minimum changeover losses and almost no variation,” said MERT YILMAZ, Stucki’s chief operating officer.
The new process maintains high quality standards while reducing lead times to customers by more than 60 percent, he said.
The powder coating line uses an automated conveyor system to move hopper car gates through an electrostatic process that applies a durable, corrosion-resistant, and dry-pigmented coating to metal hopper gates.
This process ensures the amount of paint is constant throughout the surface of the product and significantly limits variations from product to product, providing sustainable quality.
Similarly, the robotic welding process is a high-precision system that removes the variances typically caused by human intervention in the welding process, thereby ensuring a consistent quality for all products that are mounted on railcars.
“The powder coating process had been outsourced in the past, so the equipment is an important addition in terms of both speed and cost savings,” said YAGIZ AYKUT, engineering manager for Stucki de Mexico.
Currently, the line is used only for hopper gates, but it could eventually be used for other materials, including steel, aluminum, iron, castings, and some non-metals, he said.
As part of the equipment upgrade, the entire gate line was moved to the shop’s newly annexed extension, a 30,000-square-foot production facility.
“We implemented lean manufacturing principles for greater efficiency and reduced handling,” said Yagiz.
“The new layout combines everything in one area, applies lean manufacturing methods, reduces lead times, and allows for better management of the entire process under a single supervisor.”
The investment in new equipment is a response to what’s happening in the rail market, said CHRIS PROCHNOW, director of manufacturing and method engineering.
“We saw an opportunity for increased business in Monterrey,” he said.
