The best way to predict the future is to invent it (Alan Kay))
Jervis B. Webb Company was founded in 1919 in Detroit, Michigan, by Jervis Bennett Webb, a young mechanical engineer. While he was working in the carbon mines for Johns-Manville Company in Pennsylvania, Webb performed an alternation in the forged chain used in anthracite mining operations for its use as an industrial equipment conveyor. When he noticed the potential of this chain for the production of the assembly line which was starting to remodel the American industry at the beginning of 20TH century, Webb proposed reducing the 30 pound per foot weight of the chain and adapt it to the assembly line. The resulting rivetless forged chain, called «Keystone» due to its origins in Pennsylvania, could be loosened and tensioned quickly without breaking, it could also be disassembled and assembled by hand, being more versatile than a traditional riveted chain.
Back in those years, in the automotive industry, the assembly line production method had started to develop. Ford had been using a chain assembly process to build their model T since 1908 where workers had to move the chassis of the car manually by using a string along the assembly line while the assemblers installed the necessary pieces. That is when Bennett Webb with his patent, the Keystone chain, revolutionized the assembly line work concept by also supplying it with a motor. His chain could be connected to four trolleys which moved the chassis along the line. In 1920, Webb received his first brand new conveyor system order from Studebaker Automobile Company and from that year, it has had an exponential growth until present days. In 2004 Jervis B. Webb GmbH Sucursal España transforms itself and Jervis B. Webb España, S.L, a company with the same mission and personnel, focused on the development of turnkey projects and authorised distributor of the DAIFUKU-WEBB firm. We continue to develop our activities in the automobile, steel and pharmaceutical industries transforming our clients’ ideas into integrated and personalized business solutions.
