Kawasaki Rail Car, Inc. (KRC) was established in 1979 in Philadelphia, Pa., where the company's first project was building light rail cars for the city. As part of Kawasaki Heavy Industries, Ltd. (KHI), an international business based in Japan, KRC immediately benefited from a railroad heritage that dates back to 1906. Originally a shipbuilding company founded in 1878, KHI built its first locomotive just after the turn of the century and is now the largest rail car producer in Japan and a supplier to transit authorities around the globe.

By the mid 1980s, work in the New York metropolitan area brought KRC to its new corporate headquarters and plant in Yonkers, N.Y. The order for 95 subway cars for the Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) system was the start of an ongoing relationship with the northeast area's transit authorities. Kawasaki opened its Lincoln, Neb., facility two years ago to meet growing demand for its rail cars in the New York-New Jersey area and in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Virginia.

Kawasaki Rail Car's two facilities function in tandem to produce volume orders for rail cars. The Yonkers plant is equipped for fabrication, assembly, rehabilitation and function, testing of all types of passenger rail cars. Employees number 250 to 500, depending on the work in progress at the 380,000-square-foot facility. The car shell-manufacturing facility in Lincoln has capabilities to build various types of rail cars in different sizes in its 460,000 square feet of space. A group of 250 to 500 skilled employees is employed here. KRC's track record speaks for itself on the subject of reliable product. Currently Kawasaki rail cars have the best mean distance between failure (MDBF) in the industry. In New York, Kawasaki's 520 rail cars in service on New York's Lexington line achieve an average MDBF of 300,000 miles.

As part of the $10 billion KHI international organization, KRC contributed $500 million to the bottom line in 2002. Most of the U.S. company's business, about 70 percent, is in the Eastern states. In the past years, KRC has made over 700 cars for the NYCT, making that transit agency KRC's number one customer.