Global machine tool titan sets its sights on European shops

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ETMM: If you go to smtcl.eu, you see this: “We, several SMTCL machine tool importers, agent and/or distributors, from West and East Europe have been forced to stop the sales of SMTCL products till further notice.” This is followed by allegations of “quality issues”. How did this happen, and what are your plans to remedy the situation?

Heath: Many years ago, we were working with a Romanian dealer who took the initiative to register smtcl.eu and a variety of other smtcl.* domains (check the domain whois for evidence). As occasionally happens in business, we did not part on good terms and he has chosen to post that message for many years. Our attempts to recover the domains have failed.

[The result is that] we can only overcome such things with good customer feedback, and in Europe now we have many satisfied customers willing to defend our efforts.

Would we prefer that the smtcl.eu page was taken down? Of course. But it is a good reminder of our past mistakes and shows everyone just how far we’ve come as an organization. With every new, satisfied customer and every machine delivered and running smoothly we move further and further beyond that page’s claims. The European team is doing very well. I don’t lose any sleep over it anymore.

ETMM: Why did you buy German machine tool-maker Schiess?

Heath: We bought Schiess for three reasons: we wanted to enter their market segment, we wanted to use them to help drive our organizational globalization, and we wanted to use their R&D expertise to help improve our existing R&D capabilities. So far I would say we have achieved all three goals.

ETMM: How much of your company’s development is performed in Germany? What machines feature technology conceived in Berlin?

Heath: SMTCL’s long-term product development plan will see all of our lines eventually redesigned by the German R&D centers (we have a new one now in Stuttgart). At present, our Vivaturn 4 CNC lathe and a prototype HMC are fully German designs.

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