At the dawn of industrialization in 1921, be the link of the efficiency revolution
In Switzerland after World War I, manufacturing stood at the divide between "artisanal craftsmanship" and "industrial demand": As a core industry, the watch sector still relied on manual turning for specific complex parts – a 1-2mm watch balance spring collet required 15 minutes of focused work by a watchmaker, with a yield rate of less than 60%. Gramophones, as emerging high-end consumer goods, had 0.15mm steel needles with insufficient machining precision, resulting in a daily output of only 300-500 units, failing to meet European market demand. The medical device field was even in a "blacksmith-style" production stage – hemostat jaws required 5 manual processes, taking over 2 hours to machine a single unit. The dual demands of "efficiency improvement" and "precision guarantee" became the key for Swiss manufacturing to break through bottlenecks.
In 1921, 31-year-old Heinrich Johannes Schmid, the founding father of HMS, keenly identified this pain point. With the mission of "making precision manufacturing more efficient," he became an authorized partner of Tornos, a local Swiss machine tool brand. By then, Tornos had specialized in automatic lathes for over 40 years. Its M10 single-spindle automatic lathe, launched in the 1920s, featured "high-rigidity bed + precision gear transmission" technology, becoming a benchmark equipment for small and medium part machining at that time, perfectly aligning with the transformation needs of Swiss manufacturing. Abandoning the simple "equipment sales" model, the founder delved into scenarios such as Geneva’s Watch Valley and Basel’s medical device workshops, creating an integrated "equipment + process + service" solution:
Watch Industry: Launching the "Precision Mechanical Turning + Manual Assembly" Model
Introduced Tornos M10 automatic lathes to enterprises such as A. Schild SA (a renowned Swiss movement part manufacturer in the 1920s). With its "manual feeding + automatic tool feeding" design, the lathe achieved a maximum spindle speed of 1000rpm. Equipped with tungsten steel forming tools, it reduced the balance spring collet machining time from 15 minutes to 4-5 minutes, with tolerances stably controlled at ±0.03mm (far exceeding the ±0.1mm of manual machining) and yield rate increased to over 92%. HMS also assisted enterprises in optimizing process flows, accurately matching mechanically machined parts with manually polished balance springs and plates, pioneering the verification of the production logic of "mechanical efficiency + artisanal temperature." This laid the foundation for the Swiss watch industry to resist the mechanization impact from Germany and the United States in the 1930s.
Audio Accessories: Breaking the Bottleneck of Mass Production of Precision Steel Needles
To address the machining challenges of gramophone steel needles – "slender and easy to break, rough surface" – HMS collaborated with Tornos to customize the M10 lathe: adding a special chip breaker (controlling chip curling through high-frequency vibration) and optimizing the spindle lubrication system (ensuring stable speed at 800rpm), realizing continuous machining of 0.15mm high-carbon steel needles. The finished product’s surface roughness reached Ra 1.0μm (compared to Ra 3.2μm of manual machining), and daily output jumped from 500 to 2000-3000 units. It not only supplied Paillard (a high-end gramophone brand under Pathé) in Switzerland but also exported to Germany and France, consolidating Switzerland’s position in the precision audio accessories sector.
Medical Devices: Laying the First Cornerstone of Industrial Production
HMS provided Mathys Medical in Bern with a combined "lathe + milling attachment" solution: adding a manual milling head to the Tornos M10, enabling "external turning + notch milling" of hemostat jaws in a single clamping. The core processes were reduced from 3 manual steps to 1 mechanical step, improving efficiency by 3 times, with machining precision controlled at ±0.05mm, meeting the basic tolerance requirements of surgical instruments. This solution was promoted as a typical case by the Swiss Medical Device Association, becoming a landmark practice for the transformation of Swiss medical devices from manual to semi-mechanized production.
At this stage, HMS’s value had long exceeded that of an "equipment agent": it was a process translator – decomposing machine tool technology into specific machining solutions for different industries; a skill enabler – forming a 5-person technical team for on-site training and compiling the Manual for Automatic Lathe Operation in Swiss Manufacturing Enterprises; and a risk sharer – launching a flexible "pay-per-capacity" cooperation model during the 1930s economic crisis to help SMEs tide over difficulties. It was this philosophy of "deeply binding local manufacturing" that allowed HMS to serve over 100 Swiss enterprises in the 40 years from 1921 to 1960. It not only witnessed Switzerland’s transformation from a "powerhouse of artisanal manufacturing" to a "powerhouse of precision industry" but also accumulated core assets to weather cycles: a profound understanding of segmented industry processes and a symbiotic partnership with manufacturing enterprises.
