Kenworth Truck Company recently broke ground on a $140 million, 120,000 square-foot robotic painting facility. The expansion will be part of the company’s Class 8 truck assembly operations in Chillicothe, Ohio. The facility, which has been designed with an environmental focus, is projected to open in 2021. Kenworth estimates that 70% of their heavy- and medium-duty truck production is based out of the plant.
Located about an hour south of Columbus, the expansion will bring the total size of the Kenworth campus to 502,000 square feet. The company is touting it as the most modern truck assembly facility in the world, due to investments in robotics and emission control systems. These new technologies will help increase paint capacity by 50%.
As part of an ongoing investment plan at the location, Kenworth will also be installing a $33 million robotic cab assembly cell that should be operational by the end of the summer. The Chillicothe plant has become a crown jewel of sorts for the company, as it has been awarded a 2019 Manufacturing Leadership Award from the Manufacturing Leadership Council of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) in recognizing the development of innovative material handling systems. It also won the 2018 Encouraging Environmental Excellence “E3” Gold Award from the Ohio EPA.