In the Market for a CNC Machine?

Whether you are considering your first CNC machine or are looking for an additional piece of equipment to increase your production capacity, HOMAG Machinery North America has a solution for you.

HOMAG Machinery North America manufactures the WEEKE Vantech line of CNC routers at its newly expanded Grand Rapids, Michigan-based facility. The machines are sold through Stiles Machinery, a subsidiary of the HOMAG Group.

Originally, the U.S. manufacturing arm was conceived by product management at Stiles in 2008 as a direct response to their customers’ needs for a specific type of CNC machine. Their customers’ wanted a machine with a small footprint yet capable of a lot of production, and also built with quality engineering yet at a value price point. In addition, they requested shorter lead times along with after-sale support from a reliable service team. All of these factors, and many more, were taken seriously by the product development team at Stiles. In the end, the only viable solution that met their customers’ demands was to manufacture the well-known German-engineered machines in the States, right down the road from Stiles corporate offices in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  At the onset, the company’s name was WEEKE North America.

The company has produced and installed over 700 WEEKE Vantech CNC routers to date. The exceptional sales results acknowledge that the company met the markets’ needs head on.  Initially, their target customer was a cabinet shop with 5-10 employees, while today the company states that market segment accounts for approximately 50% of their business. The customer they did not anticipate was the “commercial” market segment, which can be defined as operations running one to two shifts a day. These customers sought out the WEEKE Vantech machines as they were in need to a rigid, robust piece of equipment to add to their production capacity. The surprise of this additional market segment not only opened up new possibilities for the machine, but it also dramatically increased sales more than initially projected.

Just last week, Stiles celebrated the grand opening of a new, expanded HOMAG Machinery North America manufacturing facility. Still located near Stiles in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the new factory provides 100,000 square feet of manufacturing and office space. Improvements include twice the production capacity and a streamlined manufacturing flow which applies the latest technologies and workflow processes to achieve efficient optimization.

​The new expansion and company name are part of a continued strategy by the global leader HOMAG Group to invest in manufacturing demands for the local market. The naming of the new North America manufacturing location aligns now with other international HOMAG Machinery locations, while it also implies that the facility could produce additional HOMAG brand of equipment. Christian Vollmers, President of Stiles, said it best, “It is the clear target of the HOMAG Group to produce machines specific to the market, directly in the region itself.” For now, though, HOMAG Machinery North America is the North American headquarters for nested-based CNC manufacturing technology.