Machined parts manufactured according to the customers design, as well as many other products produced in series of 30 pieces upwards. This is just a glimpse of the production – in the true sense of the word – of the family-run machine works known as Strojírna Vehovský. The company is now run by the second generation of the Vehovský family – siblings Lucie and Matěj, children of the founders, Miroslav and his wife Petra, who still play an active role in the company.
The history of the company dates back to 1997, when Miroslav Vehovský, an experienced mechanical engineer, founded the business with the aim of purchasing and reselling metalworking and forming machines. Just a year later, however, the focus of the company switched to metalworking, kick-starting its rapid growth. The logical consequence was the need for the company to move into its own large and well equipped premises, and so in 2002 the current headquarters were built in Otice near Opava.
company origination
“Before founding our company, my father worked for Ostroj, for years” explains Matěj Vehovský, the current Production and Technical Director of the company. “He worked his way up to become Director of the Tooling Division, and later Hydraulics, but in those quick-changing times, less than a decade after the revolution of 1989, he understood that he could do more – that he could make it on his own. So he left Ostroj and started his own business buying, repairing and reselling metalworking machines. After about a year, he had managed to accumulate some capital and so he decided to begin production with the machines, starting off in just a single hall in Opava.”
Luck, in the form of successful and solid customers – one Canadian and one French – has favoured the company pretty much from the start. Another fortunate step that ensured the quality of the young company’s products was the acquisition of their first Mazak machine a few years later. And so the company’s first production hall, together with an administration building, soon went up on a greenfield site in Otice. Mazak machines quickly filled the hall, and in 2006 three more halls were built, equipped with machines of the same brand.
“We started with the QUICK TURN NEXUS-200,” recalls Matěj Vehovský. “Today we have 15 Mazak machines and about seven from other manufacturers. Just to give you an idea – in 2003 we had two lathes and two machining centers. And shortly before the economic recession, we already had more than eight machines. Then the crisis in 2009 hit us hard, although we still had two major customers who had been with us from the start. We had to reduce the number of parts we were producing, while looking for new customers in other industries where the crisis had not impacted so hard. But we succeeded – partly because we focus on larger parts, and also because we’d bought two large Mazak horizontal centers and a large lathe before the crisis, which not many companies had at the time. So we were able to offer something that many others around us could not. And I think that’s one reason we found the customers that we still work for today. These days, we have about ten major and five smaller customers, and the company is still growing,” he says with pride.
Strojírna Vehovský specializes in metalworking from customer-supplied technical drawings. The local team of experienced workers, together with perfect machines, are able to meet practically any customer request, or to bring into existence any concept thought up by their designers.
“We mainly produce complex, difficult-to-machine parts that can only be made with the addition of our own know-how, and we are able to machine them from a wide variety of materials, from steel and inconel to more exotic materials,” explains Matěj Vehovský. “The bulk of our production consists of machined parts, as well as various components for hydraulic equipment, such as pumps, aggregates and the like. Our customers include companies from the plastics industry, hydraulic motor producers, and also from the agricultural machinery industry. We also produce tram and train wheels in our workshop.”
It wasn’t an easy time…
The fact that the company founded by his parents is now managed and headed by their son is not a very common occurrence in the Czech Republic. With both siblings working here, it’s almost a kind of minor miracle…
“My brother and I used to come here as children for various temporary jobs,” recalls Lucie Vehovská, the company’s Sales Director. Back then, we made a round of all our operations to see how it all worked. And when there was no work for us to do in production during the recession, we would at least sweep the halls. My parents often reminisce about those times, saying that it was very difficult. It was just the two of them at the time: we were still kids, still in high school.”
Mrs. Petra Vehovská was certainly not an insignificant cog in the company’s wheel. Since its foundation, she has been in charge of finance, while her husband, Miroslav, was in charge of production and sales. During the recession, the company had about 50 employees and ran into financial problems because it was overleveraged.
“In the years leading up to that, we’d bought a lot of machines, and the halls hadn’t been paid off, nor the building. It was a really hard time for our parents,” says Lucie Vehovská. “They even wondered at that point if they should hire a crisis manager. In the end, however, they decided that rather than leave the management of their company to a third party, they would try to manage it themselves. And they pulled it off.”
In the meantime, the siblings Lucie and Matěj had finished their respective university studies in Prague, coincidentally both in economics.
“During our studies, we also tried our hand at other disciplines. My brother worked at the Datart electronics store, while I was selling coffee machines or working in a bakery. And we both reached the same conclusion – why should we work for someone else when help was needed at home? And then, without any pressure from our parents, we both decided that we wanted to help, because they had already built something here, created a tradition and had loyal employees so we wanted to go back home and move our company forward,” Lucie adds.
Experienced help
So these days, the next generation is essentially running the company. Although the parents are still active, the day-to-day management is basically in the hands of the siblings. But this did not happen overnight.
“When we finished university and decided we were going to start full time in the company, it was clear that we had to work our way up to our current positions,” recalls the young Sales Director. “It wasn’t like we came in and immediately received decision-making powers,” her brother adds. “After I joined the company, my sister and I worked as sales clerks. Later, my sister did accounting and economics with my mum, while we worked our way up to being in charge of the day-to-day operations. Of course, it wasn’t easy for our parents, having spent many years building the company, to suddenly hand over the responsibility to someone else, even though it was their children.”
So the passing on of the baton was a step by step process, which has so far been ongoing over a period of two years, with the initial stipulation that this “handover” would last a total of five years. However, the family did not want to go it alone during the handover period, so they hired the help of a consultant – a seasoned manager with experience in multiple industries – just for that interim period. “Mr Miroslav Soukup has been with us for three years now, and he is a great help. When any friction arises between the four of us, he always tries to calm things down and advise us and our parents,” says Matěj Vehovský.
Saving time and money
The fact that Strojírna Vehovský is keeping up with the times in every sense is evidenced not only by their perfect machine park, but also by the way that the management team does not underestimate the role of information technology in modern production.
“This year we are investing in digitizing production,” says Matěj Vehovský. “At the moment, although we already have our own ERP system, which also manages production and is connected to the economics data and CRM, we would like to integrate production documentation into our workflow – by having a digital archive of designs, and a display device to display and work with those documents at each machine. All of them online, of course. In the second half of this year, we’re planning to do a pilot run on one machine, and at the end of the year, we would like to roll it out company-wide.”
No expense is spared on the quality of the tools either. “We have a tool presetting room here, because, obviously, we want the CNC machine operators to have everything perfectly prepared for their work,” explains Matěj Vehovský. “That’s why we have also invested in a new Zoller tool presetter which is automatically CNC-controlled. Among other things, it will automatically send the tool settings to the machines online over the network. Before we bought it, we had to write everything down on paper and then copy it to the machine. This new machine will save a lot of time and eliminate a lot of errors that can be caused by bad transcription.”
A promising field
What about the staff? Is there, as in most companies today, also shortage of qualified skilled staff? Surprisingly, this does not seem to be the case. Perhaps this might be down to the fact that the young management team knows how to attract their younger peers to the company.
“We have good links with technical high schools in Opava, so we get students coming here for work experience,” explains the Production and Technical Director. “We have a stipend award system in place, whereby the students receive a financial allowance if they do an internship with us as part of their studies. However, the condition is that they sign up with us for two years. And it works. Last year we ended up with four fully trained and skilled young people joining production. We’re trying to get kids into engineering. That’s why we work with primary schools and organise field trips. We’re trying to raise awareness of engineering in the sense that it’s not the kind of grimy, oily work it used to be, not anymore. Because today it’s largely about working with computers, with 3D models. In this we also took inspiration from Yamazaki Mazak, where we saw that machines can be made in bright production halls with white floors… And we also try to explain to them that this sort of job is better paid today than if they had taken a degree in something else. It’s a long-distance race of course, but this is where we see the future.”
At present, about 80 people work at Strojírna Vehovský and, according to Matěj, the company is still intent on growing, ideally to double its current size. “As it stands, we know the names of our employees, and when I walk around the shop floor, I can have a conversation with each of them and they can have a conversation with me,” he says. “It’s about camaraderie, friendship, family. We have no intention of ever becoming a giant corporation.”
We’re trying to raise awareness of engineering in the sense that it’s not the kind of grimy, oily work it used to be, not anymore. Because today it’s largely about working with computers, with 3D models. In this we also took inspiration from Yamazaki Mazak, where we saw that machines can be made in bright production halls with white floors…
Matěj Vehovský, Production and Technical Director
Equipment they can be proud of
The company’s machines come mainly from the Japanese company Yamazaki Mazak. Strojírna Vehovský has a total of 15 CNC machines from this brand. Their park currently includes, among others, the CyberTech 4500 M CNC turning center, the VARIAXIS i-600 vertical five-axis center, and the INTEGREX i-300 multi-tasking machine.
The facilities also include a separate presetting room where tools for the machines are calibrated and prepared. There is also an air-conditioned measuring room where two CNC 3D measuring machines are located.
