A Salute to Professional Engineers & Geoscientists
Issue link: http://publications.winnipegfreepress.com/i/1089026
W I N N I P E G F R E E P R E S S P R O V I N C I A L E N G I N E E R I N G & G E O S C I E N C E W E E K | 7 facility, but it also has employees in small offices in the United States, Australia, Russia, Brazil and Germany. Each machine retails for about $300,000 depending on model, header type, size, and options, and while MacDon doesn't make its sales figures public, it's safe to say the M1 Series represents a sizeable addition to the company's top line. MacDon supplies equipment to dealers and distributers around the world and has been making windrowers for about 70 years. They still perform the same tasks for farmers but today's machines have a number of significant upgrades. For starters, they're 45 feet wide now, compared to just 12 feet when they first started out. And perhaps most importantly, at harvest time farmers can sit in a large, air-conditioned cab with a leather seat and global positioning system instead of being subjected to the elements in an open cab. A number of patents have been filed on the machine as Klassen said a lot of time, effort and expense went into its development and MacDon wants to protect its engineering design investment. MacDon is poised to carve out an even bigger niche in its field and win even more awards since it was acquired by Linamar Corp., Canada's second-largest manufacturer of automobile parts, in late 2018. The Guelph, Ont.-based company had worked with MacDon for more than a decade prior to the acquisition. Klassen said Linamar wants MacDon to grow its product offering and is very supportive of what we do in engineering, which is good for all our employees. ❚ Lavergne Draward & Associates Inc. 200-193 Dumoulin Street Winnipeg, MB R2H 0E4 204.947.2222 www.ldaeng.ca BETTER BY DESIGN MacDon's M1 windrower machine hard at work in a field. Representatives of MacDon's Design Team (above) at the Engineers Geoscientists Manitoba Awards Gala, where they received the 2018 Team Achievement Award. MacDon Industries photo (here & left); Engineers Geoscientists Manitoba photo (above)