Robert Bosch in South Bend — the brake works' second successor line

1996 – 2011, in South Bend

The line Businesses missed: The Businesses record carries the Bendix works forward through Honeywell, whose aircraft wheels and brakes are still made on Westmoor Street. That is one successor line. The other — the automotive foundation-brake business, the brakes the plant was founded to make — ran a course neither Businesses pass had printed. Bendix passed to Allied in 1983 and into AlliedSignal, and in 1996 Robert Bosch GmbH acquired AlliedSignal's global brake operations entire, the purchase through which Bosch entered the foundation-brake sector in earnest. The old Bendix plant was divided between the two successors in the 1990s: photographic captions on the works, taken in 2002, record that one part of the former Bendix Aviation plant was by then owned by Bosch, with Honeywell occupying buildings that had once been connected to the Bosch building. Part of the former Studebaker proving ground west of the city was likewise in Bosch's use.

The end, 2009–2011: Bosch's hold on the business was shorter than its predecessors'. In 2009 the company contracted to sell its North American brake business to Akebono Brake Industry of Japan — a closing of a circle, since Akebono had entered brake making in 1960 under a technical-assistance agreement with Bendix itself. In November 2010, as the Tribune reported it, Robert Bosch Corp. announced it would close its South Bend facilities by the end of 2011: some 250 people worked there, and about 170 of them were offered jobs elsewhere — about twenty in the truck braking division to St. Joseph, Michigan; sixty braking-division workers and thirty corporate-office staff to the corporate headquarters at Farmington Hills, Michigan; and sixty information-technology staff to Farmington Hills or Mount Prospect, Illinois. The Bosch name had stood on part of the Bendix ground for fifteen years; with the 2011 closing, the automotive-brake line that began there in 1924 left South Bend, and the Bendix record's South Bend remainder is the Honeywell plant the Businesses entry carries.

Sources:

1. WardsAuto, "Brake Market Faces Big Squeeze" (2012) — Bosch entered the brake sector through its 1996 acquisition of AlliedSignal's global brake operations; the foundation-brake business's losses; the sale of the North American foundation-brake operations to Akebono two years before the remaining global unit went to KPS.
2. Monon Railroad Historical-Technical Society, "Bendix Aviation Corporation" (company history with 2002 photographs) — the plant divided into two separate buildings during the 1990s; the Bosch-owned part and the Honeywell-occupied buildings that were once connected to it.
3. Studebaker–Bendix Heritage Trail brochure (St. Joseph County) — "Today part of the original proving grounds is used by Bosch."
4. Akebono Brake Industry, Akebono Report 2015 and 2018 — the 2009 contract to acquire Robert Bosch GmbH's North American brake business; the 1960 Bendix technical-assistance agreement that began Akebono's brake making.
5. Indianapolis Business Journal, "South Bend to lose 250 jobs with Bosch closing" (17 November 2010), from the South Bend Tribune — the announced closing of the South Bend facilities by the end of 2011; 250 employees; the offers to about 170 (St. Joseph, Michigan; Farmington Hills; Mount Prospect, Illinois).