NEWS

EMO 2009: HTEC announcement

An awful lot can happen in two years, and in the 2 years since the last EMO, when the world’s manufacturing technology companies convened in Hanover, Germany, that’s exactly what has happened. The economic landscape has changed beyond what even the most pessimistic of forecasters could have imagined. Few saw it coming. Even fewer were prepared.

But change always brings opportunity and, as someone once said, a crisis – including the economic variety - is too good an opportunity to waste.

On the first day of EMO 2007, Haas Automation announced the official launch of its European HTEC (Haas Technical Education Centre) program: the company’s ambitious plan to change the way young CNC machine tool programmers and operators are trained. In the 24 months that followed, despite turbulent and uncertain times, Haas has begun to make good on its promise: By the first day of EMO 2009, the company, its local HFOs and its HTEC industry partners will have equipped and opened 27 fully-fledged HTEC facilities around the continent.   

Mankind faces some of its greatest engineering and technological challenges in the years ahead. The next generation will have to find and develop alternative energy sources, design and manufacture new, cleaner transportation systems, and find more sustainable ways to make the every day products we all want and need to maintain our standard of living. The starting point for all of these engineering endeavours is, and probably always will be, the CNC machine tool.

If anything good has come from the deepest economic crisis of the past 60 years, it’s that governments around Europe - from Scandinavia to the southern Mediterranean, from the Iberian Peninsula to Siberia - are recognising the need to build a stronger manufacturing infrastructure. At the very heart of such an infrastructure is the well trained, highly motivated CNC technician; someone with access to the very latest CNC technology and with the know-how and skills to get the best from it. That’s what the HTEC program aims to achieve and that’s what Haas Automation Europe and its partners will continue to pursue long after EMO 2009.

“The HTEC program is made possible largely by the support of our industry partners,” says Mr. Peter Hall, managing director of Haas Automation Europe. “They supply their world leading technologies, such that HTEC's all over the world can teach a comprehensive range of technologies required for today's advanced CNC manufacturing processes.”

The European HTEC program in numbers:

Total number of HTECs in Europe end of 2009:
40 in 14 countries

Breakdown by country:

• Austria: 4
• France: 1
• Germany: 4
• Russia: 12
• Denmark: 2
• Sweden: 2
• Portugal: 4
• Belgium: 2
• Belarus: 1
• Estonia: 1
• Poland: 4
• Romania: 1
• Ukraine: 1
• Azerbaijan: 1

Total number of HTECs in Europe by end of 2015: 200 in 35 countries