The Timken Profile
The Timken Company (Timken) designs and manages a portfolio of engineered bearings and industrial motion products, and provides related services. The company's growing portfolio features many strong brands, including Timken, GGB, Philadelphia Gear, Cone Drive, Rollon, Nadella, Diamond, Drives, Groeneveld, BEKA, Des-Case, Lovejoy and Lagersmit.
The company received two patents on the design of a tapered roller bearing. Timken remains the world's leading authority in tapered roller bearings and has leveraged that expertise to develop a full portfolio of industry-leading engineered bearings and industrial motion products. Timken built its reputation as a global leader by applying its knowledge of metallurgy, friction management and industrial motion to increase the reliability and efficiency of its customers' equipment across a diverse range of industries. The company's global footprint consists of manufacturing facilities/service centers, technology and engineering centers, and distribution centers and warehouses. Timken operates in 45 countries around the globe.
Major Customer
The company sells products and services to a diverse customer base globally, including customers in the following market sectors: industrial distribution, renewable energy, automation, automotive original equipment (OE), agriculture/turf, rail, aerospace, auto/truck aftermarket, construction, services, metals and mining, heavy truck OE, and marine.
Products
Timken manufactures and manages global supply chains for multiple product lines including engineered bearings and industrial motion products designed to operate in demanding environments. The company leverages its technical knowledge, research expertise, and production and engineering capabilities across all of its products and end markets to deliver high-performance products and services to its customers.
Engineered Bearings
The Timken bearing portfolio features a broad range of engineered bearing products, including tapered, spherical and cylindrical roller bearings; plain bearings and rod end bearings; thrust and specialty ball bearings; and housed bearings. Timken is a leading authority on tapered roller bearings and leverages its position by applying engineering know-how and technology across its entire bearing portfolio. Timken components are also used in a wide variety of industrial applications, including paper and steel mills, mining, oil and gas extraction and production, agriculture, construction, machine tools, gear drives, health and positioning control, wind turbines and food and beverage processing.
Tapered Roller Bearings: Timken tapered roller bearings can increase power density and can include customized geometries, engineered surfaces and specialized sealing solutions. The company's tapered roller bearing line comes in thousands of combinations in single-, double- and four-row configurations. Tapered roller designs permit ready absorption of both radial and axial load combinations, which makes them particularly well-adapted to reducing friction where shafts, gears or wheels are used.
Spherical and Cylindrical Roller Bearings: Timken also produces spherical and cylindrical roller bearings that are used in gear drives, rolling mills and other industrial and infrastructure development applications. These products are sold worldwide to OE manufacturers ("OEMs") and industrial distributors serving major end-market sectors, including construction and mining, natural resources, wind energy, defense, pulp and paper production, rolling mills and general industrial goods.
Ball Bearings: Timken radial, angular and precision ball bearings are used by customers in a variety of market sectors, including aerospace, agriculture, construction, health, machine tool, the automotive aftermarket and general industries. Radial ball bearings are designed to tolerate relatively high-speed operation under a range of load conditions. These bearing types consist of an inner and outer ring with a cage containing a complement of precision balls. Angular contact ball bearings are designed for a combination of radial and axial loading. Precision ball bearings are manufactured to tight tolerances and come in miniature and instrument, thin section and ball screw support designs.
Housed Bearings: Timken markets among the broadest range of housed or mounted bearings in the industry. These products deliver durable, heavy-duty components designed to protect spherical, tapered and ball bearings in debris-filled, contaminated or high-moisture environments. Common housed unit applications include material handling and processing equipment.
Plain Bearings: Timken produces a range of plain bearings including rod-ends, spherical plain bearings, metal-polymer bearings and journal bearings. These bearings are used to support misalignment and oscillating movements in a variety of applications and end-markets, including aircraft controls, packaging equipment, off-highway equipment, heavy truck, performance auto racing, robotics and many more. Various combinations of material pairs and engineered coatings improve friction management for application specific conditions.
Industrial Motion Products
Linear Motion Products: The company designs and manufactures a global portfolio of Rollon and Nadella engineered linear motion products, including linear guides, telescopic rails, linear actuators, seventh-axis robotic transfer units and gantry systems. These engineered products are highly customized to control movements with different variability and complexity based on the application. Rollon and Nadella products serve a wide range of industries, including passenger rail, aerospace, packaging and logistics, medical and automation.
Industrial Drives. The company's Philadelphia Gear line of low- and high-speed gear drive designs are used in large-scale industrial applications such as crushing and pulverizing equipment, conveyors and pumps, power generation and military marine. These gear drive designs are custom made to meet user specifications, offering a wide array of size, footprint and gear arrangements. Timken also offers Cone Drive high-torque worm gears, harmonic solutions and precision slew drives. Cone Drive products can be found in a variety of industrial end-market sectors, including solar, oil and gas, aerial platforms, automation and food and beverage. The company's Spinea line features highly engineered cycloidal reduction gears and actuators. Spinea's solutions primarily serve high precision automation and robotics applications in the factory automation sector.
Lubrication Systems: The company's Groeneveld and BEKA lubrication systems include a wide variety of automatic lubrication delivery devices, oil management systems and safety support systems designed to reduce operational costs for customers while increasing equipment uptime, productivity and safety. These systems support many industries, including renewable energy, transportation, construction, mining, port, forestry and agriculture. Timken also offers over two dozen different formulations of grease, leveraging its knowledge of tribology and anti-friction bearings to enable smooth equipment operation.
Belts: The company makes and markets a full line of Timken belts used in industrial, commercial and consumer applications. The portfolio features more than 20,000 parts designed for demanding applications, which are sold to original equipment and aftermarket customers. These belts are engineered for maximum performance and durability, with products available in wrap molded, raw edge, v-ribbed and synchronous belt designs. Common applications include agriculture, construction, industrial machinery, outdoor power equipment and powersports.
Chain: Timken manufactures precision Diamond and Drives roller chain, pintle chain, agricultural conveyor chain, engineering class chain and oil field roller chain. These engineered products are used in a wide range of mobile and industrial machinery applications, including agriculture, oil and gas, aggregate and mining, primary metals, forest products and other heavy industries. They are also used in the food and beverage and packaged goods sectors, which often require high-end, specialty products, including stainless-steel and corrosion-resistant roller chain.
Couplings: The company offers a full range of industrial couplings within its industrial motion products portfolio. The Lovejoy brand is widely known for its flexible coupling design and as the creator of the jaw-style coupling. Lovejoy couplings are available in curved jaw, jaw in-shear, s-flex, gear-torsional and disc style configurations. These components are used in a wide range of industries such as steel, pulp and paper, power generation, food processing, mining and construction. The company also offers an extensive line of torsional couplings offered under the Torsion Control Products brand.
Industrial Clutches and Brakes: Timken offers a selection of engineered clutches, brakes, hydraulic power take-off units and other torque management devices marketed under the PT Tech brand. These products are custom engineered for OEMs and used in marine, mining, aggregate, wood recycling and metals industries.
Seals: The company's Lagersmit engineered sealing solutions serve demanding marine, dredging, water, tidal energy and other industrial applications. The business serves leading propulsion manufacturers, ship owners, pump makers and other global industrial customers that require advanced sealing systems. Timken offers other industrial sealing solutions that come in a variety of types and material options and are used in manufacturing, food processing, mining, power generation, chemical processing, primary metals, pulp and paper and oil and gas industry applications.
Other Products: The company also offers specialty filtration products, augers and other specialized industrial motion products. Des-Case is a technical leader in branded filtration solutions that sit adjacent to Timken's automatic lubrication systems. Des-Case features a comprehensive product offering including breathers, filter elements, condition monitoring, lubrication storage and filter systems used throughout the entire lubricant lifecycle. These solutions are critical for enhancing reliability, reducing downtime and extending the useful life of customers' systems. The company also designs and manufactures Drives helicoid and sectional augers for agricultural applications, like conveying, digging and combines. The company's specialized industrial motion components include Shuton and Ipiranga ball screws among other key products.
Services
Power Systems: Timken services components in the industrial customer's drive train, including switch gears, electric motors and generators, gearboxes, bearings, couplings and control panels. The company's Philadelphia Gear services for gear drive applications include onsite technical services; inspection, repair and upgrade capabilities; and manufacturing of parts to specifications. In addition, the company's Wazee, Smith Services, Schulz, Standard Machine and H&N service centers provide customers with services that include motor and generator rewind and repair and uptower wind turbine maintenance and repair. Timken Power Systems commonly serves customers in the power, wind energy, hydro and fossil fuel, water management, paper, mining and general manufacturing sectors.
Bearing Repair: Timken bearing repair services return worn bearings to like-new specifications, which increases bearing service life and often can restore bearings in less time than required to manufacture new. Bearing remanufacturing is available for any bearing type or brand - including competitor products - and is well-suited to heavy industrial applications such as paper, metals, mining, power generation and cement; railroad locomotives, passenger cars and freight cars; and aerospace engines and gearboxes.
Sales and Distribution
Timken products are sold principally by its internal sales organizations. A portion of each segment's sales are made through authorized distributors or sales agents.
Customer collaboration is central to the company's sales strategy. Therefore, Timken goes where its customers need the company, with sales engineers primarily working in close proximity to customers rather than at production sites. The company's sales force continuously updates the team's training and knowledge regarding engineered bearings and industrial motion products and related market sector trends, and they assist customers during product development and implementation phases and provide ongoing service and support.
The company has a joint venture in North America focused on joint logistics and e-business services. This joint venture, CoLinx, LLC, includes five equity members: Timken, SKF Group, Schaeffler Group, RBC Bearings and Gates Industrial Corp. The e-business service focuses on information and business services for authorized distributors in the Engineered Bearings segment.
Timken has entered into individually negotiated contracts with some of its customers. These contracts may extend for one or more years and, if a price is fixed for any period extending beyond current shipments, customarily include a commitment by the customer to purchase a designated percentage of its requirements from Timken. Timken does not believe that there is any significant loss of earnings risk associated with any given contract.
Competition
The company competes with many domestic and foreign manufacturers of anti-friction bearings, including SKF Group and Schaeffler Group, and with a diverse group of domestic and foreign manufacturers of industrial motion products.
Compliance with Governmental Regulations
Environmental Matters
The company and certain of its U.S. subsidiaries previously have been and could in the future be identified as potentially responsible parties for investigation and remediation at off-site disposal or recycling facilities under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA), known as the Superfund, or state laws similar to CERCLA.
Because of its global operations, the company is subject to a wide variety of domestic and foreign laws and regulations, including securities laws, tax laws, data privacy, employment and pension-related laws, competition laws, the U.S. and foreign export and trade laws, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and similar worldwide anti-bribery laws, government procurement regulations and laws governing improper business practices.
History
The Timken Company was founded in 1899. The company was incorporated in 1904.
