THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS
When machine tool maker Schiess became part of the Shenyang Machine Tool Group, German engineering excellence was joined to Chinese production capabilities. Peter Mercer reports.
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2004 the old-established German machine tool manufacturer Schiess GmbH was acquired by the Shenyang Machine Tool Group (SYMG), the largest machine tool manufacturing company in China. Schiess can look back on a fine tradition of producing very large machine tools since it was founded in 1866. In 1886 the company designed and constructed the first single-column carousel-type machine with 9,000 mm face plate and over the years it focused mainly on the production of portal milling machines, vertical lathes and slideway grinding machines at its Aschersleben plant. In 2011 Schiess extended its product range with
the introduction of the ASCA series of medium sized machine tools. SYMG was founded in the 1930s and today has a global workforce of more than 20,000. It comprises the Chinese machine tool companies Shenyang Machine Tool Co Ltd (SMTCL), Kunming Machine Tool CO Ltd, Yunnan CY Group Co Ltd and now Schiess GmbH (Aschersleben) and Schiess Tech GmbH (Berlin). SYMG is one of the few machine tool manufacturers in the world to offer a complete spectrum of chip-producing machine tools. These include compact barturning machines, milling centres, universal machining centres, large processing units,
conventional turning and milling machines as well as high-speed 5-axis machines for turning and milling operations. Its machines are used in the automotive, mechanical engineering, aviation and aerospace, transport, power generation and electronics industries. Xin Guan, managing Director of Schiess GmbH, explains the strategy behind the acquisition of the German company, “Until fairly recently SYMG had concentrated on developing its home market and even in 2012 it was still making 96 per cent of its total revenues from sales in China. The strategic decision was taken to increase the Group’s export revenues in future years by around 30
