H. H. Hsu: Taiwanese door opener for the “Middle Kingdom”
The contact between the taiwanese Hsu family of entrepreneurs and MAPAL dates back to 1985. The mechanical engineer H. H. HSU, the second generation of the family business Hung Chih, becomes aware of the reamers with guide pads from MAPAL. Convinced and fascinated by the technology, he meets Rüdiger Langknecht, the MAPAL sales person responsible for Asia, in Taipei. A year later, Dr Dieter Kress appoints H. H. Hsu as MAPAL sales representative for Taiwan.
From the 1990s onwards, the Chinese market rapidly gains in importance as numerous European automotive companies set up large-scale production sites there. H.H. Hsu is absolutely convinced that MAPAL benefits from this above all because its tools are “the most economical and innovative precision cutting tools” and therefore “the best product on the market”, for which technical service is also offered, “which is why we can easily keep up with all our competitors”.
In order to be able to offer this service in full, MAPAL and H. H. Hsu's company sets up joint ventures in Taiwan and China with own production capacities in 2003. To ensure that MAPAL standards are maintained, H. H. Hsu visits Aalen at least twice a year, and many of his employees are also regularly there for training.
While most customers in Taiwan come from the mechanical engineering sector, the automotive industry has so far been the largest customer for MAPAL solutions in China. A business model that, in the foreseeable future, faces significant changes because of the transformation to electric vehicles. H.H. Hsu is certain that MAPAL, under the leadership of Dr Jochen Kress, will “find the best solution to overcome this challenge”. This includes the development of new customers from the aerospace and fluid power industries as well as the general mechanical engineering sector also in Taiwan and China. H. H. Hsu is not worried about the future of his family business as a partner of MAPAL: his daughter and son are already on board as sales managers. And he adds: “When MAPAL recognises a new challenge, the company takes decisive action to overcome it. It's always been like that.”