On 3rd October, 2023 our annual Company Gathering took place involving our more than 230 colleagues. Co-workers from all divisions, should it be software or hardware development, digitisation, automation, power electronics, embedded systems, measurement and test systems; sales, human resources, finances, quality, IT, and all back-office departments assembled in a charming conference facility near the River Danube.

The purpose of the event was to share an insight of the passing business year behind us, recall some of the success stories, reflect on the challenges we faced and shed light on the vision of growth strategies for the coming years. The Company Gathering had clear goals for offering not only a professional agenda, but also grant a high degree of interactivity and reflectiveness for our colleagues so we can involve them during every part of the programme with a real-time feedback form.

The event started with an intro video specifically created to kick-off the event and give motivating starting tone.

The first presentation was the keynote speech of Dr. Péter Várady which was address to all 230 colleagues of the HEITEC Hungary and DMG MORI HEITEC Digital companies. Dr. Várady reflected on all the joint efforts our colleagues made to bring success to the company this year, focused on the most important milestones and expressed his gratitude towards the co-workers. Our CEO not only highlighted our key competences, but also put them into perspective to show how competitive we are in the industry. Dr. Várady’s section ended with a short movie compiling messages from a handful of satisfied partners explaining the benefits of working together with HEITEC Hungary and DMG MORI HEITEC Digital.

The upcoming section was presented by Csanád Pálfalvi, Chief Operating Officer, and Zsolt Várady, Head of Business Development of HEITEC Hungary. Mr. Pálfalvi was first reflecting on the structural adjustments made in the core business units which was a result of a strategic alignment of our key competences. Then he continued explaining the benefits which these adjustments unfolded. Zsolt Várady seized the moment for showing how HEITEC was advancing in building partnership with new clients and what practical actions we are taking in making our company more visible on the market. As a closure, a newly debuting image video wrapped up the section.

Ferenc Boros, Head of Department from DMG MORI HEITEC Digital took the stage and shared the latest achievements of the collaboration with the Nr1 machine tool manufacturer, DMG MORI. In his speech he highlighted the increasing responsibility of our colleagues, the appearance of new roles and the growing trust. He also outlined our contribution to the EMO industrial trade show, and finally summarising with a message to “Let’s dare to be brave!”.

During all presentations we collected real-time feedback and invited all our management speakers on the stage to reflect on these questions. As we received a tremendous amount of questions we answered the most urging ones at the spot, and answered the remaining ones after the event.

After a break and refreshments, we continued our session with Dávid Gyovai, Digital Sales Manager from DMG MORI HEITEC Digital who shared his story about the digitalization vision of DMG MORI. He discussed the importance of the digitisation efforts the machine manufacturer makes in order to revolutionize industrial manufacturing. He also brought some insights and market feedback of our digital product debuting at EMO.

The closure of our internal session was a roundtable discussion about an ever-urging topic: the importance of a roadmap and vision in successful projects. The different aspects were discussed

involving a project manager, product owner, scrum master and a devops engineer. With the help of András Selmeczi, Szabolcs Pásti, Bence Balázs, Zoltán Török we unrevealed how the different job roles define roadmap and vision and what steps can we make in case any of them, or both of them are blurry or non-existent. We also argued what responsibilities distinct roles have in creating or fine-tuning these business compasses, and what will make a project successful at the end.

The end of the roundtable discussion closed the internal topics and opened up space for more casual subjects.

First, we welcomed Dr. Ferenc Kása Professional Diplomat in charge of Artificial Intelligence and Data at Neumann Nonprofit Kft who discussed recent trends in AI advancement. Dr. Kása gave us a deep dive into legislation situation of the technology, expected rules on how to handle Artificial Intellgience EU-wide and brought us practical examples on how it is used in the IT and other sectors.

Our final speaker was a sports legend. It took us a few minutes to introduce the list of all her achievements, medals, victories in an adventurous career of swimming. Éva Risztov shared her story from the very early childhood till winning gold medal at the Olympics games. The motivating speech put the audience into a real emotional rollercoaster, highlighting both ups and downs and the necessity of never giving up on our dreams.

The Company Gathering closed with a standing buffet and some great, casual discussions till early night.

We are extremely proud that thanks to our exciting digitisation agenda and research & development projects, DMG MORI HEITEC Digital Kft received funding by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary for supporting creating an additional 50 workplace in our professional software development centre increasing our capabilities of developing software solutions for the market leading machining tool producer, DMG MORI.

During the press conference Minister Mr. Péter Szijjártó highlighted the importance of investing into such R&D projects as one of the most value-added activities a company can bring to the country, while Dr. Péter Várady, CEO of DMG MORI HEITEC Digital referred in his speech on the highly-skilled Hungarian workforce and heritage in engineering solutions which the company would like to contribute to and place a landmark on.

We are greatly thankful of the continuous support of the Government of Hungary for supporting our endeavour in revolutionizing the machining industry with digital solutions.

Learn more about the press conference at tonight’ news broadcast. We will share the link later.

Photos: Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary

We are very proud and honoured that Dr. Masahiko Mori, President of DMG MORI Co., Ltd., and his colleagues personally visited us, the Hungarian software development centre of the DMG MORI group, DMG MORI HEITEC Digital Kft.

This is an extremely important milestone in the life of our company.

During the visit, our guests were given an insight into our projects and had the opportunity to talk with our software engineers about our activities.

On the group photo from left to right: Gabor Kovacs (MD of DMG MORI Hungary Kft.), Tommy Dr. Kuhn (MD of DMG MORI Digital GmbH), Johannes Feldmayer (General Representative of HEITEC Holding), Dr. Makoto Fujishima (Vice President of DMG MORI CO., Ltd.), Dr. Masahiko Mori (President of DMG MORI CO., Ltd.), Péter Várady (MD of DMG MORI HEITEC Digital Kft. and HEITEC Hungary Kft.)

In December, we gave out several awards to our colleagues at our annual Christmas party. We honoured our jubilant colleagues who have been contributing their professionalism and dedication to our company for 5 years.

We congratulate Zsolt Varady and Laszlo Zsidek, and thank them for their work and wish them many more years of success!

In December, we joined together again to help families in need and make the holidays more joyful for them. Thanks to our colleagues, we collected and delivered personally to the families several boxes of durable food, toys, sweets and clothes.

During the CSR 2022 event, we specifically sought out families that we could contact directly and had personal relationships or indirect contacts with our colleagues, so we knew firsthand that the need was huge.

We visited several rural locations during the programme. We took packages to Valko, where we met the Principal at the Móra Ferenc Primary School. There we handed over several boxes of food, toys and sweets and where we could not go, our contact person delivered the presents to them before Christmas. We visited 4-5 other households in the village and in Gödöllő on the same day, where we also treated them with the gifts we had collected. They also received durable foods, sweets, toys and clothes.

The other half of the donations was offered to a family with 4 children in Vindornyalak, they live in very unpretentious conditions in the village. The house had no heating nor electricity, so it was a clear choice to help them so the holiday would not be about deprivation.

We will continue this tradition of collaboration in 2023 and thanks to the CSR team we have set up for this purpose, we are planning more charitable actions this year.

Read the LinkedIn post of our CEO Péter Várady, who also wrote about the unscheduled wage increase due to increased inflation and the reform of our internal recommendation system:

“We have exciting new challenges ahead of us and, as always, we need the best professionals to succeed! We set high standards for ourselves and others! That’s why we create a creative and inspiring working environment for our colleagues working on world-class engineering projects, giving them the greatest possible flexibility and rewarding them with above-average remuneration. But we’re not satisfied with just that: we’ve increased all our colleagues’ salaries by 10% from July to reflect rising inflation.

However, in order to maintain our professional standards, we will continue to hire only motivated candidates who are open to development and challenges. And the best candidates come from personal recommendations. That’s why we’ve thought of a bold idea: we’re extending our internal reward system for successful referrals outside the company, so that it’s no longer just our colleagues who can receive recruitment rewards. Details will be available soon on the company LinkedIn page.”

How are the worlds of software development and mechanical engineering connected? How can a company put mechanical and electrical engineers at the same table with IT developers? What opportunities arise from this? What are the implications of today’s digitalisation trends? These are the questions we sought to answer in our interview with Dr. Péter Várady, CEO of DMG MORI HEITEC Digital Kft. and HEITEC Hungary Kft. where he talked about the applications developed by both companies, the company’s plans and the link between software and machine tools.

(source: cnc.hu)

The beginnings

The international HEITEC Group has a history of almost 40 years. Starting out as a classic engineering company in the field of automation solutions, today it has a wide range of competencies in the areas of electronics, manufacturing and quality control systems as well as digitalisation. The group is still family-owned and has its headquarters in Erlangen, Germany, with more than 1000 employees. It also has around 10 German sites and subsidiaries in Austria, Slovakia, Romania, Turkey, China and, for more than 4 years, Hungary.

„Previously, I started as a software developer in an industrial IT development company where I later became a division manager, and spent the last 10 years at the software development company as managing director, – says Dr. Várady Péter. “During that time, I learned a lot, I was involved in organic growth, acquisitions and all the things that come with growing an SME into a large company. In 2018, I joined HEITEC as CEO, which has also grown rapidly in Hungary, morphing into an engineering company with a broad range of competences, working as a developer and integrator in electronics, software, mechanical engineering and digitalisation solutions.””

Joint venture between HEITEC and DMG MORI

HEITEC in Germany had already been in contact with DMG MORI before, as they had worked together on the development of CELOS. In Hungary, HEITEC started system testing of CELOS in 2019 and set up a test lab for this purpose.

“At that time we were testing version 5, now version 6 is already on the market. We had a team of 6 people, the number of which doubled half a year later. At the end of 2019, I received the news that that HEITEC and DMG MORI were in talks to set up a joint development centre. DMG MORI HEITEC Digital Kft.is how came into being, in which HEITEC holds a slightly larger share in order to be able to retain the flexibility of a medium-sized company,” says Várady.

An integrated digitalisation platform is currently being developed, with services covering the entire production lifecycle. This includes various solutions from DMG MORI’s portfolio or areas of interest, such as WERKBLIQ, ISTOS, UP2PARTS, PAYZR, CONNECTIVITY and ADAMOS STORE, as well as the latest version of CELOS. In addition to the development teams already established in Germany, the Hungarian headquarters was opened in 2020 and expanded to almost 150 employees within two years. Growth is far from stopping here, which is not only measured by the number of employees or the number of orders. The work done here is increasingly value-adding, as the development engineers in Budapest are being given more and more responsibility.

Wide range of activities and manpower

DMG MORI HEITEC’s mission is software development, including the development of integrated digitalisation solutions and services for the machine tool industry. In addition to new products, the further development of software solutions previously created at various locations is now also supported by a competence centre in Budapest, making the work faster and more efficient.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to find good skilled workers for development, and this is no different in Germany. Especially in the IT sector, there is an increasing demand for more and more experts. Here in Hungary we offer attractive jobs to development engineers, because we produce world-class products that will shape the future of the industry. I would even say they are real engineering works of art. We also try to offer our colleagues the most flexible working conditions possible,” – Várady emphasises.

Software development with a background in mechanical engineering

The question arises as to how software development and digitalisation fit in with DMG MORI’s core profile: machine tool manufacturing. DMG MORI has recognised several years ago that digitalisation is the next milestone in the world of industry, to which the company pays particular attention, as digitalisation in the field of machine tools holds enormous potential. To support this, HEITEC and DMG MORI have joined forces to collaboratively develop digitisation solutions for industry.

“You hear a lot about the fourth industrial revolution triggered by digitalisation: about new business models and the focus on increasing efficiency. DMG MORI is pursuing a very good digitalisation strategy to lead the entire machine tool industry into the digital age. Here at DMG MORI HEITEC, we have been working for more than two years on software solutions and services that cover the entire manufacturing lifecycle, from order management and production planning to maintenance and servicing. In many cases, even machines from other manufacturers can be integrated into these solutions,” – says Várady

Balance of supply and demand

“DMG MORI is responsible for most of the customer support as well as product management. At the same time, we are getting more and more feedback from the customers, we are following the local market. Last summer we started selling products and digital services in the region, some of which are developed here. We are now launching our product support and integration service. We have two digital sales colleagues who work closely with our machine sales colleagues in the surrounding countries.”

Market and development are thus closely linked, and the response is extremely good. Since development and sales are done internally, there are many synergies and a transfer of knowledge between the two functions. This has also been noticed at DMG MORI, which gives the Hungarian development centre more and more trust.

Global team

“It is a long road, we are still at the beginning of the distribution process. We expect and hope to see exponential growth in the next 3 to 5 years. Currently we have a team of 3-4 people in sales and product support, and we believe we can double that number within a year,” – says Várady

The products developed with the company’s help are of course not only distributed by DMG MORI regionally, but also globally. In addition to the expansion of sales channels, global product development is also constantly evolving, so that DMG MORI HEITEC’s product and software development is involved in the work of an international project team.

Impact on the IT sector

DMG MORI also draws inspiration for software development from its own example: The products developed are also used in the company’s own factories, so that feedback on software development comes first-hand. The development needs and suggestions of customers are fed back to the development department via DMG MORI’s sales network and are bundled by the product managers and incorporated into the development.

DMG MORI has always been known for its constant pursuit of industrial innovation. With its digitalisation strategy, the company is now once again leading the way, improving the world of manufacturing and creating the concept of the digital factory. The developments cover the entire production cycle, where progress must not stop, new functionalities and new solutions are needed, based on the needs of customers in the market.

Digitisation in Hungary

„The digitisation aspirations of small and medium-sized manufacturing companies are more difficult to serve, but more and more smaller companies are recognising the value of such development, as the investment can pay off in the short term. The main purpose of these applications is to increase the efficiency of existing machines or to create new business opportunities. The receptiveness to this is increasing. Of course, a lot of investments were cut back last year because of COVID, and there were signs of recession in the automotive industry before that. But now customers are more open to digital solutions again.”

With developments and investments in the field of digitalisation, it is understandable that a small company with 20-30 employees cannot necessarily afford what a multinational company can. DMG MORI recognised this challenge when developing its strategy and has therefore made its products highly scalable so that solutions can be tailored to actual customer needs and the number of machines, even on a monthly subscription basis. In addition, DMG MORI places great emphasis on offering solutions that are manufacturer-independent, enabling the company to distribute its solutions to a much wider target audience. The WERKBLiQ service application, the ISTOS production planning application and the TULIP system for supporting manufacturing sites are at the forefront of this.

Future-proof improvements

„Our software developer base has been expanded, we have been able to hire excellent professionals whose knowledge we can build on for future development” – says Dr. Várady Péter. “We plan to increase our staff by 15-20 % this year and next. However, software developers need to work with mechanical and electrical engineers, they need to understand production processes and how a machine tool works. This does not happen overnight. That’s why we support our colleagues in acquiring knowledge through training and factory visits.

DMG MORI HEITEC attaches great importance to the qualification of the employees and the familiarisation of the IT specialists with the machine tools. Their goal is to let all developers see live what they are working on. The company offers training and factory tours at FAMOT, one of the most modern and digitalised plants in the group, so that colleagues can learn more about production and see the products they are developing in action.

“To showcase our own developments, we are planning to set up a virtual showroom, a digital factory. We are working together with our colleagues from DMG MORI so that we can comprehensively demonstrate the software solutions and the connections between them.”

Security and reliability are of paramount importance for the future and represent real key issues in software development. We live in a time when cybercrime is becoming more and more threatening, so data security is a fundamental requirement.

“DMG MORI HEITEC achieved ISO 27001 certification just six months after the company was founded, which only a few companies have managed to do in such a short time. It is important to protect not only customer data, but all aspects of product development,” Várady emphasised.

Industry-independent solutions or solutions for the machine industry?

DMG MORI HEITEC’s solutions are primarily designed for mechanical engineering, but there is also distinctly industry-neutral software, such as TULIP, which we distribute. The software is a flexible platform for creating applications that can be used to increase process reliability, for easy data collection and for tracking production – all features that can be used by any industry.

“DMG MORI integrates TULIP into its own processes and also offers it in Europe as a standalone solution. We also distribute TULIP and employ our own application engineer for it, so we will quickly address companies that are not explicitly machine tool manufacturers,” says Várady. “I would also like to highlight WERKBLiQ, precisely because it is manufacturer-independent. It is a service and maintenance platform that can be used to look after entire factories and plants that have a heterogeneous machine structure. It can be used not only in the machine tool industry, but can also be localised in other areas. It can be configured in many different ways.” – says Várady. “I would also like to highlight WERKBLiQ, precisely because it is manufacturer-independent. It is a service and maintenance platform that can be used to look after entire factories and plants that have a heterogeneous machine structure. It can be used not only in the machine tool industry, but can also be localised in other areas. It can be configured in many different ways.”

What does the future hold?

It is important for us that the development engineers working here feel as closely connected as possible with the company and the products we develop here. We have to work on this continuously, because the know-how of our employees is the most important asset of our company. That is why we pay attention to continuous professional development and challenges as well as a working environment with maximum flexibility.

“As I mentioned earlier, DMG MORI is aiming to digitally transform the entire industry. Overall, DMG MORI’s digitalisation portfolio is already so extensive that I think it has become inevitable in this area, and with it the developments that are taking place at DMG MORI HEITEC.”