Dr. Peddinghaus - Insight Into the Success of Peddinghaus

This is Lyle Menke for Peddi-TV.

I'm very honored to have Dr. Carl U. Peddinghaus with us today. Dr. Peddinghaus is the third generation owner of Peddinghaus Corporation.

So Dr. Peddinghaus, welcome to Peddi-TV.

Thank you.

And now, Peddinghaus Corporation--you were the third generation owner, and Anton and Cilla are the fourth generation owners. Why is this important to you to have a family business?

That's a good question. You can decide yourself what is the best for everybody in that company.

I think that's the main cause for doing it on our own. So in the next decades, you know, Peddinghaus developed many new machines, from rebar equipment to flame hardening equipment.

And one of the machines that has the most popularity is the Peddinghaus universal ironworker, especially the series called the 210 series.

Now, why was this machine so popular?

The idea of these Peddinghaus machines has been that you combine the vertical movement of the power slide with a collar knife, and you use it like a wedge so that you could change from this vertical movement to movement at an angle.

And with this using of wedges, you had a reduction in the length of the cut, but you had a higher power of almost 16%.

So that shows you the technological advancements that the Peddinghaus engineers used at that time, and they still employ many of those same things.

Yeah, that was a patent for 18 years. And in that time, the competitors could not use this idea, and therefore we have sold in that time quite a lot of machines.

Now in going forward in history, some of the next series of machines, some of them when you became directly involved, was the new drill lines--the model TDU drill line, the TDK drill line.

Why was that machine so popular-- or I guess, perhaps, why did you want to develop those CNC machines at that time?

First of all, in former times, these 210 were machines where you had many tools in one machine but not in the same spot.

That means you could not organize it online, so you had always to move the part to the different places. That means you had to move it from the punch station to the cutting station or to the notching station.

But now with these online machines, you had the tools one behind the other, so you could move the material directly through everything, and you only needed controls to start the process--without a helping hand by man.

So really it was a labor-saving device that increased the productivity and made the fabricator and made the customer much more efficient.

So when he's more efficient, then he'll become more competitive in the market, so that was good for steel buildings--regardless if it was in Europe or Asia or Latin America or in North America.

So I know from your background, you always visited customers, and Cilla and Anton always visit many, many customers as well. You think that's important to do that?

Yeah.

Why?

You must have a feedback of your machines and what the people are doing with it. How will they work with it? Have they had other proposals, what you can make better in-house to have a better machine in the future.

Yeah, so you encourage them to always go out and see many customers.

I know from my tenure as Peddinghaus too, I've always been going out and visiting the industry and customers also to get new ideas and feedback to share that.

What do you think are the real keys to success for your company or for a good company--what must they do to be successful?

First, you must have good people. And you must have not only good people but people with ideas so that you wake up interest under the customers.

What do you consider one of your favorite business accomplishments?

That was the decision to invest in the United States. We did this decision in 1974, and I'm glad that we were successful until today. And I hope in the future, too.

So Dr. Peddinghaus, in conclusion, I must tell you that your business has affected many, many people here in America and in other parts of the world. And we would all like to say, thank you.

Life for me--it affected my life, and I've been with the company 30 years. And we're very grateful that you made the decision to come to America for here but for also for other companies that you've established in Spain, Netherlands and other places as well. So we want to say thank you very much.

So this is Lyle Menke for Peddi-TV with Dr. Carl U. Peddinghaus, saying, thank you very much.

Thank you.