By Stan Modic

 Despite its importance to our industrial base, the machine tool industry is not considered by many as a core competency to that base. Most companies are relatively small. Worldwide, few do more than a billion dollars in revenue. Most are focused on defined product lines, specific markets, or certain metalworking technologies.

 Now comes along a relatively new player combining the talents of many U.S. and European companies —MAG–Industrial Automated Systems (MAG–IAS), an American–bred metalworking empire assembled by Mo Meidar, chairman and CEO.

 Meidar just bought another giant German company, Boehringer, which adds crankshaft machining and turning capability to the group, which already includes Cincinnati Automation and Test, Cincinnati Machine US, Cincinnati Machine UK, Fadal, Giddings & Lewis, Hessapp, Huller Hille, Witzig & Frank, Maintenance Technologies, and MAG Powertrain, composed of Cross Huller, Ex–Cell–O and Lamb.

 The companies are organized into five groups: Powertrain, serving the automotive and other durable goods industries; Cincinnati Technologies, targeting automated composites and large workpiece machining; Blue Technologies, focusing on CNC machine and turning centers; Special Machining Technologies, offering horizontal machining centers, vertical turning machines, and flexible machining cells; and Maintenance Technologies, dedicated to improving asset utilization.

 The Boehringer acquisition is part of Mo Meidar’s strategy to create a global engineering, manufacturing, and customer service group. Meidar insists he is in the business to stay, as opposed to simply fixing and selling operations for a profit. We’re told he once toiled in a metalworking shop.

 How do you run a $1.28 billion melding of 16 different companies operating on five continents and serving markets that stretch from small machine shops to aerospace, automotive, and general machining businesses?

  Mo Meidar avoids media, so we asked his president, Roger W. Cope, whose job it is to make the empire hum at a profit. Even though Cope is “traveling all the time, and at one point spent six months in Germany,” he agreed to take time for an exclusive interview.