The UNITED GRINDING Group is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of precision machines for grinding, eroding, lasering, measuring, and combination machining. With around 2,500 employees at more than 20 manufacturing, service, and sales locations, the Group has a customer-oriented and effective organization.
With its brands MÄGERLE, BLOHM, JUNG, STUDER, SCHAUDT, MIKROSA, WALTER, and EWAG as well as competence centers in America and Asia, UNITED GRINDING offers a broad application knowledge, an extensive product portfolio and a complete array of services for surface and profile grinding, cylindrical grinding and tool machining. In addition, a competence center for additive manufacturing is operated under the IRPD brand.
Interview with Paul Kössl, Global Head of Business Development & Marketing at UNITED GRINDING Group.
Easy Engineering: What’s the news about new products?
Paul Kössl: UNITED GRINDING is not only one of the market leaders in its industry, but also one of the technology leaders. A fixed amount is consistently invested in R&D and innovations every year.
C.O.R.E. – Customer Oriented REvolution – is the group’s latest project. Thanks to a novel hardware and software architecture, possibilities for connectivity and using modern IoT applications are created. This opens the door to the digital future. Furthermore, C.O.R.E. enables a novel and intuitive operation, which was recently awarded the UX Design Awards 2022 Special Mention for outstanding user and customer experience.
Further innovations will be presented at GrindingHub from May 17-20, 2022 in Stuttgart. On the first day of the show at 10 a.m., several new products will be unveiled. Among them is the WALTER HELITRONIC G 200, the latest addition to the tool grinding machine range, featuring innovative machine concepts on a mounting area of less than 2.3 m2. Other brands, including STUDER from the cylindrical grinding machines technology group, will also be presenting world firsts. To keep things exciting, we will not divulge any details about these new products in advance before the unveiling presentation on the first day of the trade show.
Paul Kössl, Global Head of Business Development & Marketing at UNITED GRINDING Group
E.E: At what stage is the market where you are currently active?
P.K: The market for machine tools is basically a mature market. However, the market is also very diversified in terms of customer industries, countries and the size of our customers. Our products have a broad range of applications, from single part to mass production, from small businesses to large corporations, and are used in a wide range of industries. Our primary focus is on the automotive and automotive supplier industry, medicine, aerospace, tools, tool and mold making, transport and heavy industry, machine construction, energy and precision mechanics. Depending on changes in the market and technology trends of our customer industries, we must also adapt our products to changing market conditions.
E.E: What can you tell us about market trends?
P.K: The important market trends in the machine tool industry are increasing automation and digitalization.
Both support our customers in making the users job easier, manufacturing their products even more efficiently and requiring less highly qualified personnel to do so.
E.E: What estimations do you have for 2022?
P.K: The year 2022 is difficult to predict. No one can accurately assess the current global political situation and its impact on the world economy today.