Heller CEO: Modern training makes mechanical engineering more attractive

Currently, some companies are having difficulty finding enough qualified trainees. How is it at Heller?

Thorsten Schmidt: For us, we have a very stable program that has been in place for decades. We are headquartered in Nürtingen and are essentially a top player in the region. Therefore, I cannot confirm that we have problems finding trainees.

We rely on very long-term cooperation with our colleagues. The average employee has been with us for over 20 years. Often, multiple generations are represented.

We currently have over 140 trainees here at our location, which is our largest site with nearly 1600 employees. This shows that 10 percent have absorbed the DNA very early on, and therefore I cannot say that we have problems.

We also have a top HR department that is very committed - through schools and universities, but also with open house days. Accordingly, all the places have been filled over the past few years. This is certainly also a sign that the Heller brand has high value and is appreciated - also on the employee side.

Certainly, this is also because the training at Heller is of high quality. How do you integrate modern and new technologies and methods into your training program, for example?

Schmidt: By integrating the latest trends in our training, from industrial mechanics to industrial clerks, from mechatronics to automation technology.

I can certainly mention a highlight here: We actually assemble machine tools in our training. We try - in modern terms, one would probably say end-to-end - to map the entire process once and give our trainees the opportunity to understand what everything is actually for.

This is always the construction site: If you go in too narrowly somewhere, then you ask yourself, why am I doing this? I also did an internship on the lathe back then and then you knew: Okay, I have to produce five parts now. Then you said to yourself afterwards: Man, what was that for? And no one explained it to you.

And this approach is certainly not very effective in inspiring a generation that nowadays has many more alternative options to be enthusiastic about machine tool manufacturing, which still tends to have a negative image. People still believe in blue overalls, oil, and dirt, and we try to counteract this with the topics of digitalization, automation, and also the production of a real machine tool that is actually in use.

You have your training machine for this: the Tokn. What exactly do you do with it and what is special about it?

Schmidt: Exactly. The Tokn is a five-axis milling machine that is very compact, ideal for training. Not only for our training, but also for training at our customers' facilities.

This is something that has occupied us for quite some time. You often go through vocational schools and colleges in America and see more of a machine graveyard where the next generation is trained. Then you think: Man, it's not really that appealing that people are being introduced to this high-tech industry with these old machines.

That doesn't make the image any better.

Schmidt: No, that doesn't make the image for the industry any better at all. But we are taking a different path: with us, there is the Tokn - a five-axis milling machine for very compact, small components with the Sinumerik One, including a digital twin. This simulates a production environment on 10 square meters, and the Tokn has a maximum of three of them, and yet you make chips.

The whole thing is a product that was developed several years ago. It has just received a facelift, a really new generation. By the way, it just won the German Design Award 2025 in the category Excellence Product Design of Industry. So the Tokn has also been recognized for not only functioning well but also looking pretty cool. Which plays a role for younger people.

And this is definitely a game changer for our own training. This machine is assembled by our trainees, is currently on a road tour around the world, and we are actually trying to improve the image a bit with it, but also to entice a new generation to say: "Hey, I find that exciting, I want to get involved with it."

Because we often find the situation on the customer side that companies hesitate to invest in high-tech because they say, we lack the trained personnel for it. Our people can do three-axis milling, but no one understands five-axis simultaneous milling, and we now finally have the vehicle to bridge this gap.

Bridging is also a topic in another direction. What role do collaborations with educational institutions and universities play in your training strategy?

Schmidt: Without the appropriate partnerships, both on the industrial side and on the training side, it certainly doesn't work at all. We have numerous universities and institutions through the second educational path with which we cooperate. Here we also provide the means and opportunities for people who may not have directly said "I'm starting now in a machine tool industry," but perhaps a bit of late starters, whom we also try to integrate - that's a bit of my passion.

I co-founded the VDW's youth foundation back then as a board member. This youth foundation is also something remarkable because it brings together different participants, who are actually in competition with each other, into a foundation to promote young talent.

In this context, my heart is set on showing, documenting, and proving that we are not an industry on the decline, but quite the opposite, offering pretty cool development opportunities through the topic of digitalization, as well as through the end products manufactured by our machine tools. We are heavily involved in the aerospace industry, the medical industry, oil and gas, so in real high-tech industries. In these, you also have the opportunity to develop very broadly and then choose the right path for your own career.

This interview is an abridged excerpt from the Podcast 'Industry Insights'. You can listen to the entire conversation about Heller's commitment to training, industry partnerships, and artificial intelligence for machine tools here:

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