PART 2
When Konrad Meister stepped aside from running the day-to-day business of Meister Abrasives in 2003, the company’s mindset had to change during the leadership transition to his son Thomas. Meister already had built a strong global reputation as a niche player in the grinding industry, producing precision products for a narrowly defined market: a handful of big international automotive companies and their suppliers.
Thomas Meister
Under Thomas Meister’s leadership, the company’s path to growth was nothing less than the process of unveiling potential and raising awareness outside the market in which it had built its reputation for customer-centered quality. The shift from a small company created by one entrepreneur to a professional enterprise on the global market demanded substantial internationalization and diversification. Konrad Meister already had prompted the company to diversify beyond conventional grinding wheels to vitrified bonded superabrasive tools, but real broadening of the customer base required more changes and adjustments.
In Meister Abrasives’ early days, only a handful people handled all sales activities, traveling the globe and taking care of all incoming orders. At the same time, everyone in the company knew Meister’s business vertically, from raw materials through pricing. By the time Thomas Meister took over, the company had achieved ISO certification and embarked on creating a more professional internal structure that could support further growth.
Externally, Meister Abrasives began to build a global sales force, which already included divisions in the U.K. and U.S., and now expanded to Italy, Asia Pacific and local distributors in regions beyond Europe. This larger sales organization served the company’s long-time major clients as well as its new international customers, each of which required resources with a local footing to serve its specific needs.
Thomas Meister took over this process and moved it forward. He also expanded the company’s focus beyond producing internal-grinding tools for products involved with internal combustion. As committed as Meister Abrasives was to its global clients and the worldwide reputation the company had built in the automotive industry, Thomas Meister also knew that staying overly reliant on one industry presented a risk. He focused on using the company’s technical and scientific knowledge – and its strengths in customer relationships – to broaden its product line and reach a wider range of customers. This was one reason that Meister Abrasives entered the “large-wheel” business, branching out beyond the tools required to work at the very small scale of its traditional customers’ needs for internal-diameter (ID) grinding.
Revolutionizing the process of grinding requires more than superlative grinding wheels. Machine technology holds the key to optimizing the process and creating opportunity. Because of Meister’s technological prowess, entering new markets involved less of a technical challenge than a need to build relationships with new customers. One of the keys to accomplishing that objective lay in creating connections with the OEMs who actually build the grinding machines and convincing them to include Meister Abrasives’ products with their machine tools upon delivery.
Today’s Meister customers actually buy processes, not just equipment, and they have a vested interest in continuing to use what works to support those processes. Because many customers remain loyal to the consumables that they first encounter when they take delivery of a grinding machine, Meister Abrasives’ relationships with grinding-machine makers opened doors that previously hadn’t been accessible.
Like his father, Thomas Meister also communicated in many languages and understood the advantages that gave him in terms of building connections with customers. That understanding helped prompt him to build a diverse team that could continue the company’s focus on real relationships. To diversify the technological foundation of the company, Thomas Meister brought in Dr.-Ing. Peter Beyer, an expert in ceramic processing and superabrasives, as CTO. Dr. Beyer laid the foundation for a successful new line of large CBN and diamond tools in vitrified bonding for precision applications. To ensure Meister’s position as the technology leader in ID grinding, Dr. Beyer also developed groundbreaking technologies to expand the company’s product portfolio.
As Meister solved problems for its customers, it correspondingly expanded its knowledge and the range of products it could create. Thomas Meister and Dr. Beyer began diversifying the company’s products to serve industries beyond its historic core focus on internal-grinding and automotive applications. To broaden its horizons, the company set its sights on the semiconductor industry, in which challenging materials and demanding needs for precision coincided.
porous vitrified diamond technology for the semiconductor industry
The semiconductor industry already was highly technology driven. Dr. Beyer’s expertise helped advance Meister’s product development, and its approach to new industries, through fundamental R&D that yielded new products and new manufacturing techniques unlike any in the grinding industry. This revolutionary portfolio of grinding wheels for the semiconductor industry led Meister to realign its focus.
In 2012, Dr. Beyer assumed the role of CEO, continuing new product development at the same time that he worked to enhance close cooperation between customers and Meister’s sales force and R&D. Newly developed product lines targeted dressing and hard materials machining in addition to semiconductor applications. At the same time, Meister introduced Vitrified-Micron (VM) technology, further differentiating its ID grinding products on the market.
Meister Abrasives has always created products based on what customers need for greater part quality and longer wheel life. Under Dr. Beyer’s direction, Meister’s sales, application engineering and R&D became more tightly integrated, viewing the collaboration with customers as a joint approach to meeting market demands. With customers on site at Meister’s facilities and Meister R&D involved at customer locations, the joint approach provided a logical way to understand customer requirements and meet market demands.
Today, CEO Frederik Dresen continues to guide the company to a broader global customer base, using his background in international management to expand Meister’s focus on collaborative relationships with customers. Even as Meister Abrasives has moved from a small company to one solidly positioned for growth, one aspect of the company’s outlook and philosophy remains unchanged: The technical depth and personal roots of everyone in the company focus on customers first.
Meister Abrasives AG today
For a company with such strong personal relationships, the hiring process deepens in complexity. Technical mastery isn’t enough to earn a place at Meister Abrasives; new hires must share the company’s historic focus on customer needs and direct connections to them. The result is a company – and products – that always stays ahead of the curve, and that embodies the benefits of strong relationships as well as advanced technology.
