Introduction
The German government has always attached great importance to the important strategic position of the machine tool industry and has vigorously supported it in many aspects. Germany pays special attention to scientific experiments, combining theory with practice, and attaching equal importance to basic scientific research and applied technology research. The German Machine Tool Association believes that the development trend of machine tool technology in the next few years will be reflected in personalization, automation, and high efficiency. The industry predicts that in 2014, domestic and overseas orders for German machine tools will increase by 10%, and the output value of machine tools will increase by 3% to 14.8 billion euros, which will become a historical high. The following are the top 10 German machine tool companies (in no particular order):
1.Gildemeister
The Gildemeister Group is a leading global manufacturer of metal cutting machine tools. Its main business areas include “machine tool products”, “services” and “software solutions”.
The GILDEMEISTER-Group is the world’s largest manufacturer of metal cutting equipment with its three brands DECKEL, MAHO and GILDEMEISTER. Behind this success is the Group’s constant pursuit of innovation and the continuous optimization of production and logistics in its ten plants in Europe.
2.TRUMPF Group of Germany
TRUMPF Group of Germany is one of the leading companies in the field of global manufacturing technology, with a glorious history of more than 80 years since its establishment in 1923. TRUMPF Group is headquartered in Ditzingen near Stuttgart, Germany, and is a global leader in technology and market in the field of industrial lasers and laser systems.
Based on the rapid development of the Chinese market, TRUMPF Group has continued to invest in China since 2000, and has invested in four production enterprises in Taicang, Jiangsu and Dongguan, Guangdong, producing CNC sheet metal processing machine tools and medical equipment. TRUMPF Group, headquartered in Ditzingen, Germany, has a history of more than 80 years of machine tool production and is one of the leading companies in the field of global manufacturing technology. It currently has 7 subsidiaries in China, including two production enterprises.
3.Schuler
The Schuler Group’s history dates back to the blacksmith shop founded by Louis Schuler in Gรถppinge, Germany in 1839. The company has been producing metalworking machine tools since 1852. The Austrian Andritz Group now holds the majority stake in Schuler.
As a global technology and market leader in the metal forming industry, Schuler provides machines, production lines, molds, process technology and services for the entire metal processing industry. Its customers include automobile manufacturers and their suppliers, as well as many companies in the forging, household appliances, packaging, energy and electrical industries. Schuler is also a market leader in casting technology and provides system solutions for the aerospace and railway industries.ServolineL is the fastest press line in the world manufactured by Schuler.
4.Emag
The origins of EMAG date back to 1867. It was originally a cast iron and machine tool manufacturer established in Bautzen, Saxony. In 1952, the company was rebuilt and located between Stuttgart and Ulm, not far from the company’s current location in Salach. After the reconstruction, the company began to manufacture lathes.
In the 1980s, EMAG achieved great success in the field of manufacturing highly automated CNC lathe units. The production system was sold all over the world and was put into use by various industries.
In 1992, EMAG launched an inverted lathe as the world’s first machine tool manufacturer. The lathe is characterized by the spindle completing the loading and unloading, and the spindle travels while the tool holder is fixed. In other words, EMAG turned the traditional lathe upside down.
5.KorberSchleifring
Schleifring Group is a subsidiary of the German Kรถrber Group, which includes three major groups: paper machinery, tobacco machinery and machine tools. In the past few decades, the machine tool group has successively acquired many world-class grinding machine manufacturers, including STUDER, BLOHM, MAEGERLE, JUNG, SCHAUD, MIKROSA, EWAG and WALTER.
In addition to its headquarters in Germany, the Schleifring Group has many companies in the United States, Europe and other countries, and its products are distributed all over the world. The products entered China in the 1960s.
Up to now, more than 3,000 Schleifring products have played an important role in many manufacturing fields such as automobiles, motorcycles, aviation, aerospace, ships, weapons, etc., among which military systems account for about one-third of the total number of Schleifring machines.
6.Index
Index was founded in 1914 by Hermann Hahn, who started the production of turret automatic lathes in the same year. He was a young entrepreneur from Swabia who impressed people with his creative ideas and strict pursuit of quality as the cornerstone. More than 20,000 automatic lathes were sold in 40 years, laying the foundation for Index’s outstanding reputation around the world. In 1975, Index began to produce multi-spindle automatic lathes.
7.Henglun Heller
HELLER was founded in Nรผrtingen, Germany in 1894, with annual sales of 592 million euros, 60% of which comes from the automotive industry. Its customers include bus, truck and agricultural machinery manufacturers, and the remaining 40% is distributed in mechanical engineering, power generation, mold manufacturing and aerospace.
HELLER machine tool products include: horizontal machining centers, 5-axis machining centers, milling/turning centers, flexible manufacturing systems, crankshaft and camshaft machines, etc. HELLER ranges from single machines to turnkey manufacturing systems worth 150 million euros, from new machine tools to full-service agreements to machine modifications. Especially in the field of crankshaft processing and light transmission systems, HELLER is one of the three major partners in the global market.
The newly developed small and light crankshaft processing machine fills the gap in low-end products in the internal and external milling process; the twin-wire arc spraying technology has successfully solved the coating problem of the engine cylinder bore, and has now entered the crankcase manufacturing process chain and has been put into operation on the German production line.
8.Chiron
Chiron was founded in 1921 and is located in Tuttlingen, more than 100 kilometers from Stuttgart. Chiron’s products are high-speed, high-efficiency, high-precision, high-quality vertical machining centers, bar profile processing machines and other high-speed special machine tools. The product range ranges from small-batch five-axis linkage processing to large-scale high-precision mass production.
Chiron has more than 800 employees at its headquarters in Germany. Chiron currently has branches or representative offices in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Australia and China, serving customers in 54 countries and regions around the world, selling about 1,000 machine tools each year with a turnover of 200 million euros. Chiron has become the largest, fastest and most technologically advanced vertical machining center manufacturer in Europe.
9.Grob
GROB was founded in 1926 in Munich and is headquartered in Mindelheim, Germany. GROB is the company with the most complete range of machine tools in the world. Whether it is standard machine tools, complex production systems or assembly units on cutting lines, or fully automatic assembly lines, GROB’s processes and technologies are always at the leading level. GROB is good at “turnkey” engineering of the entire line of engine parts and is a global system integration supplier covering different processes, technologies, resources and cultures.
10.Hermle
HAIMER is located in Igenhausen, Germany and was founded in 1977. It specializes in the production of high-precision dynamic balancing tool holders, dynamic balancing machines for tools, tool holder heat shrink machines, 3D edge finders and centering instruments, etc.
HAIMER is committed to the development and production of high-precision, high-quality products. Many of its products have taken a leading position in the same field and have been recognized worldwide. The company fully adopts fully automated and flexible production lines to ensure product quality and output, thereby greatly reducing users’ procurement costs.
In addition to the above ten companies, Germany also has a number of well-known companies such as Rofin-Sinar, Siemens, Niles-Simmons, Autania, Kasto, DS Technologie, and Waldrich Coburg.
