The new demonstration room fills the entire ground floor and is carpeted and plush. At the time of the firm's grand opening, the demo room had Wenzel's LH87 with Renishaw REVO, an XO55 CMM, an Xcite CMM and its latest product, the CT Workstation exact M that X-rays components.
The new facility, on the Moons Park (B98 9PA), has been personally overseen by Wenzel UK's managing director, Martin Hawkins, who has been at the forefront of Wenzel's activity in the UK for 20 years this year.
Wenzel, as a wider company, is run by a brother and sister team, Frank and Heike, and at the demo room's opening Heike told Machinery that the UK market is "something special for us".
"We're not selling out of catalogues," she said. "Our main target is to offer solutions for companies. We have some very satisfied companies because they can come to us with a problem and we work out how our machines can help them."
The companies Heike Wenzel refers to are the likes of Jaguar Land Rover, BMW and car maker Rolls-Royce. All three had representatives in attendance at the opening and Mr Hawkins described them as "beacons of great industrial innovation" during his opening speech and personally thanked them for their support.
Mr Hawkins had even arranged for three cars – a Rolls-Royce Ghost, MINI Cooper and Range Rover – to be parked outside the front of the building, the idea being he wanted to showcase the products that Wenzel's measuring machines are helping to manufacture.
In the case of Jaguar Land Rover, Wenzel's machines have dramatically speeded up the prototyping times of the new car models it is making such as the F-Type Coupe and the upcoming C-X17.
Wenzel's building boasts very good links to the motorway system. There's a small reception with stairs leading up to a large area with sofas for visitors. Offices and a boardroom branch off this main area giving Wenzel UK the perfect facility to do business from.
Other representatives at the opening were from Messier-Bugatti-Dowty, Safran and Iscar Tools. Iscar has a very close relationship with Wenzel as it uses the company's machinery to measure the accuracy of its tools. It has even run joint seminars with Wenzel. "Wenzel is one of our technical partners," explained Mike Jones, technical manager for Iscar Tools who was at the opening. "We also use its CMMs for inspection on customer components, so as well as us supplying tools, we can also measure what they are manufacturing too."
Summing up, Mr Hawkins said the larger facility and demo room will greatly improve the customer experience. "It's an easy-to-get-to location for customers wanting to see demonstration of how Wenzel machines work," he said. "It will also allow us to support our growing customer base."
www.wenzel-cmm.co.uk
