The best of both worlds Schiess

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.

IN 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

per cent and the plan was to use Europe, the world’s most challenging market for machine tools, as the launch pad for later extension into worldwide markets.

“SYMG also wanted to expand its capability in large machine tools of the kind widely used in the nuclear and wind power industries as well as in shipbuilding and locomotive construction and Schiess had many years of experience in this field – its tried and tested machines have been in successful use in Europe and world-wide for many decades - and we saw that it had the potential to be a key element in our own globalisation strategy. In the past few years, therefore, SYMG has invested more than €30 million in new machining technology and in building up the expertise of the workforce at the Schiess site. We believed that if we wanted to expand first into the European market, then Germany, with its strong technology base and its sophisticated market demands, was the obvious country to start in. If SYMG could leverage Schiess’ skills and reputation to be successful in Germany it would be able to succeed anywhere in the world.”

Schiess Tech

However, SYMG’s strategy through its acquisition of Schiess was not just to thereby gain access to new markets, first in Europe and the worldwide. It was also to draw on the skills and technology of the German company’s designers and engineers to produce a whole new generation of machine tools that would combine German engineering excellence with Chinese high-volume, low-cost production. In 2012 it therefore established Schiess Tech GmbH in Berlin to be a provider of technology, competence and products for SYMG. Today more than 50 mechanical and electrical design engineers work in an office on the Potsdamer Platz developing sophisticated machine tools which can be produced in China at highly competitive cost and sold to both the European and the Chinese markets.

“Through this win-win approach, SYMG machines are being developed and brought to readiness for series production using Germany’s technologically high levels of engineering expertise and then the economics and scale of the Group’s production capacity in China enables the machines to be manufactured at an economically viable cost,” explains Dr Marcus Otto, Director of Schiess Tech. “The European market places different demands on machine tools from the Chinese market. For example, the users have different experience and training and so the operator model is different. The technological requirements are also different in Europe due to the tendency towards complete machining and, of course, machines have to

meet the highest possible quality demands. So here at Schiess Tech’s Berlin office engineers from ten European countries are working closely with Chinese colleagues to develop equipment for the world market. One of the first results of this collaboration is our new VIVA TURN 4, a horizontal lathe from our new VIVA product range which is designed here in Berlin for the European market and assembled at SMTCL’s facility in Shenyang.”

Looking at the long term

When it began its move into the European market SYMG was well aware that to be successful it would have to create a sales and service organisation that would ensure that its customers would always have highly-trained contact staff close to them. It therefore invested heavily in training its partners as well as in ensuring that its own specialised staff at Schiess’ sites at Aschersleben and Frankfurt are positioned to fully support these partners. In addition, the central spare parts warehouse in Aschersleben is closely connected to the international freight airport at Leipzig-Halle to ensure that most spare parts can be supplied overnight across Europe.

Like many Chinese companies, SYMG takes a long-term view of business opportunities. “The current markets have great potential for high tech machine tools but, nevertheless, they will stagnate in the long term,” says Guan Xiyou, Chairman of SYMG. “We believe that the markets of the future will be in developing and newly industrialising countries and that their specific circumstances mean that they will need different types of machine tools. So SYMG’s systems in the future will be ‘SMART’ Simple, Maintenance friendly, Affordable, Reliable and Timely to market.”

SYMG is also convinced that machine tool manufacturers will have to fulfil ever higher customer expectations. “A machine tool will increasingly become a mere component in a comprehensive range of services,” says Guan Xiyou. “The customer-supplier relationship will be transformed from just selling a machine to a multi-disciplinary partnership extending over the entire product life cycle. These challenges cannot be met by any individual supplier – global collaboration projects with complementary companies are necessary.”

SYMG’s collaboration with Schiess is the first step on this strategically vital road. n

Developped on tecnology SGM the automatic tools and pallets systems are universal and adaptable to the most new and already installed machine tools.

SGM systems engineering develops the idea of modularity to accomodate the ever changing costumer’s needs. Available in different models and sizes the SGM systems are the perfect solution to improve the productivity and quality upgrading.

Phone: +39.030.2680220 Fax: +39.030.3580372 Email: info@sgmtools.it www.sgmtools.it