About

Starting Semester: Spring 2025
Assigned: No
Location: Gainesville

Fox Factory

Client Profile

Fox Factory designs, engineers, manufactures, and markets suspension products. The company provides performance-defining products such as suspension systems and components, cranks, wheels, cycling components, and other components for bicycles, snowmobiles, on-road and off-road vehicles, trucks, side-by-side vehicles, motorcycles, and other specialty vehicles. Fox also provides products to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Fox Factory is headquartered in Duluth, Georgia with operations around the world including a large manufacturing facility in Gainesville, Georgia that produces shocks for off-road power vehicles.

Project Description

Title: Main Valve Assembly Standardization



The origins of Fox Factory began in the early 1970s with the long travel motocross movement. The shock absorbers of the time could not handle the long travel required by the off-road conditions and were overheating, fading, and breaking. The first Fox shocks were created in a garage by Bob Fox, an engineer and amateur motocross racer. Fox shock design has evolved since to include a wide array of vehicles with similar design concepts including a valve inside the shock body that requires complex manual assembly. This valve assembly is labor intensive and not standardized across all production lines.



This project will focus on the main valve workstations on all the assembly lines and will require understanding the differences in workstation standard work and cycle times as well as developing an optimized methodology that can be standardized across all lines.

 

Goals / Deliverables:

- Optimize workstations to define best proven methodology

- Standardize labor times by component

- Validate times in labor standard calculator

- Preparation for automation



Impact: Improve Safety, reduce labor, improve uptime, and improve quality

Skills

Process Improvement, data analysis, problem solving, and creative thinking