BIG Kaiser announced a range of investments in production, logistics and infrastructure, as well as the recruitment of additional customer-facing staff across Europe.
The company is currently investing several million euros into new machines and machining centers, including the purchase of two DMG Mori turning centers, one with robot loading, and the modernization of its machine park to better align with Industry 4.0 paradigms. Investment into production equipment will remain strong into 2020 with the addition of a Spinner turning center and a Hardinge turning center with robot loading, boosting production capacity by 3000 hours per year at BIG Kaiser in Switzerland.
The outstanding growth in 2018 set the scene for consolidation in 2019 that has enabled the current substantial investments. In 2020, the company will also be opening a state-of-the-art technology center and has migrated to the latest SAP enterprise resource planning system. These concrete steps towards smart manufacturing and lean production are set to give the company substantially greater flexibility to react to market conditions. In 2019, the BIG Kaiser strengthened its field and technical sales presence by recruiting more staff in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Russia, Austria, the Czech Republic and Scandinavia.
The company’s major product launches in 2019 included the EWE Downsize, an extremely small digital fine boring head, as well as new sizes and indexable inserts which expanded BIG Kaiser’s turning tools range, and the Dyna Test, Dyna Force and Dyna Contact measurement and test devices developed by BIG Daishowa in Japan. Technological innovations will continue into 2020, with several new advanced tools and production systems in the pipeline this year.