98 Business View - July 2015
LOGISTICS
equipment, and such. And at one point, in 1967, the
company was acquired by General Signal, so we were
doing a lot of aircraft equipment. Then it got taken over
by Knorr-Bremse and it came back to original braking
equipment, which has always been our core business.”
Knorr-Bremse, headquartered in Munich, Germany, is
a global leader in the field of brake systems for rail
and commercial highway vehicles, and operates 45
production and sales facilities in 26 countries.
NYAB has 530 employees in its Watertown headquar-
ters and a total of 825 across 6 SBU (Strategic Busi-
ness Unit) locations in North America including New
York, Ontario, Texas, Illinois, Missouri, and North Car-
olina. NYAB employs state of the art manufacturing
processes including Knorr Production Systems (KPS),
Quality processes, ERP and MRP systems to produce
highly engineered and reliable braking and air supply
systems for freight cars and locomotives. NYAB main-
ly serves the continental market. Connell explains,
“There are seven large railroads in North America,
there are seven large car builders – these are the folks
that manufacture the freight cars – and there are two
large locomotive builders. So our top ten customers
comprise 80 percent of our sales and profit, and our
top 20 customers comprise 90 percent of our sales
and profit.”
