What Goes Into the Making of a Snow Plow

With more than 70 years of snow plow experience, Western Products has its manufacturing process down to a science. From initial concept to production, our dedicated team works relentlessly to give you the highest quality of snow and ice control products in the market. Here’s a little insight to how we do it.

From Concept to Design—Engineering At Its Best

We don’t employ your typical white glove engineers, we choose people that know what it takes to get things done right—and that doesn’t mean just throwing more metal at it to make it stronger. We build our products as light as possible while still maintaining strength and durability.

Every spring, our team is eager to get started on our new product lineup. Before determining which product we’re going to build, we need to understand our customer’s preferences, expectations and aversions. We do this through focus groups, social media, online surveys and face-to-face interactions to identify exactly what drives our customers—and then we build product that meets that demand.

Prototype Testing and Winter Validation

Once we bring a concept to life with a prototype, we push it to the limit with the goal of breaking it so we can make it better. WESTERN® knows the importance of durability and by pushing our products to the brink of failure, we can redesign and strengthen its weakest points. Each version scores better than the last until we are confident it’s ready to withstand anything winter throws its way.

Every Two Hours, a New Snow Plow is Born

Our mixed-model production structure means that we’re able to build every product every minute throughout the plant to ensure we always have product available for our customers. The two major components our customers receive when they order a snow plow are a fully assembled blade and fully assembled attachments (including fully functioning hydraulics). By insourcing the critical process of manufacturing our own power units and hydraulic components, it helps to support lead time performance and improve product quality.

Our snow plows are produced utilizing a robust lean manufacturing process that begins with profiling (burning) individual component parts from flat sheet steel. Next, these components are formed and welded prior to entering a fifteen-step prime and powder coat process. Finally, the components are assembled, packaged and staged for shipment. These competitive advantages position us to deliver more reliable products, award-winning snowplows even, and get them in the hands of our customers faster.

For more information about our manufacturing facility and how WESTERN gets more jobs done faster, watch our behind the scenes video.