Heller Celebrates 30 Years in the United States
In 2012, Heller Machine Tools is marking its 30th year of operations in the United States as a subsidiary of Gebr. Heller Maschinenfabrik, Nurtingen, Baden-Wurtemberg, Germany. Heller worldwide is a 600 milion-euro company with approximately 3,000 employees. The company specializes designing and building high precision flexible production systems for the powertrain operations of automotive and heavy-diesel industries, primarily. In 2012 the U.S. company expects to double sales over 2011, which was a record for the operation, and is about a third of the global total for Heller.
Heller has increased the U.S. content of the systems it produces, partly due to the cost advantages of producing the systems in the United State as compared to Europe. The company has helped to increase the amount of manufacturing technology produced and exported from Michigan, some systems shipping to China for major automotive companies and suppliers. More than 60% of the content of the systems produced at Heller Troy is sourced in Michigan.
The company is a full-line manufacturer in Michigan, designing, building, and servicing its machines from its 100,000 sq ft facility in Troy. There are 130 employees at Troy working alongside 60 contractors. The company estimates it supports several thousand additional employees in 50 or more supplier companies in Michigan.
A specialty of Heller is the machining of compact graphite iron, a very hard material cast into large diesel engine blocks. Machining CGI requires a very stable, heavy-duty machine tool, and Heller CGI machining centers have been placed in nearly all heavy-duty diesel engine and others.
Heller began its operations in the United States in 1982 in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, primarily as an importer and servicer of its crankshaft milling machines it was then selling to Ford, Deere, Caterpillar and Chevy Bay City plants. Its first generation of horizontal machining center, the BEA, was developed and first sold in 1986. Since then, the company has become the largest European manufacturer of horizontal machining centers. Originally, the company designed and produced its own CNC control for the machining centers. Now, most controls are Siemens or Fanuc, depending on customer preference.
In 1995, Heller management in Germany decided to move to the Detroit area as it was increasing its role as a supplier to the automotive industry. The thinking then was that “the auto industry will always need machine tools.” So it built a plant in Troy, expanding it three times since 1996 to create more assembly space, engineering offices and service capability for repairs, machine rebuilds, and spare parts. The company has, in the last 30 years, shipped over 1500 machining centers from its U.S. operations.
