precision-engineering

UCH & BUMOTEC: a relationship built on trust

Interview with Ahmed EL YAMANI, CEO of the UCH SA

At the heart of the French Jura mountains, 60 km from Geneva, Ahmed El Yamani, CEO of the company UCH SA, welcomes us to their premises in Villard Saint-Sauveur to talk to us about their activity, their business strategy and their relationship with the Bumotec brand. Created in 2003 by five partners who were specialists from the machining world, UCH now has 35 employees in France and has recently set up a subsidiary in Morocco.    

UCH is a rapidly expanding company. What are the keys to your success?

Ahmed El Yamani: Machining lies at the heart of what we do. We are subcontractors for small- and medium-sized assembly companies who, in turn, work for large international groups. We owe our successful expansion to the strategic decision to diversify our activities. From the outset, we made a choice not to focus on a single market; for watchmaking, we invested in an inventory of machines which enables us to offer a range of products which can be manufactured whilst remaining profitable. The result is that, today, we have a production output which is balanced, and split across sectors, with 30 % of our activities in watchmaking, 40 % in leatherwork, 20 % in energy and the remaining 10 % split between medical, micro-engineering and eyewear.


More specifically, what type of parts do you create for these market sectors?

Ahmed El Yamani: For the watchmaking sector, we mainly produce large runs of titanium inserts and bracelet links, but we also manufacture clasps, end pieces and cases. The leatherwork sector is a much broader one, and covers all metal items which are assembled with leather, such as buckles, fasteners, clasps, etc. For the energy sector, we mainly produce accessories and small electrical components for circuit breakers. Some 90 % of our production is delivered to customers in France, Switzerland and Italy.

Ahmed El Yamani

What equipment enables you to meet the demands of these markets?

Ahmed El Yamani: Our machine inventory comprises 40 production units, including 23 machining centres, 20 of which came from Bumotec, a few mechanical lathes and transfer machines, plus a few hybrid production units, which combine mechanical technology and numerical control to enable us to increase the production options we offer, in terms of complexity. What sets us apart is our ability to offer the right machine solution for the various needs of the market. Without the technical capabilities of our machines, we probably wouldn’t still be around today.  


Your collaboration with Bumotec started in 2003. What is the current situation?

Ahmed El Yamani: During the year when UCH was being set up, I was lucky enough to meet Damien Chêne, a Bumotec representative, at a trade fair. I already knew the brand, but did not yet have any machining centres. The first order was placed that year for an s192 model. Since then, orders have been placed at regular intervals. On average, one Bumotec machine has been installed every 8 months since UCH was founded. Today, we have 20 Bumotec machines in total. These include two s192 models, two s89, eight s94, one s90, three s92, and, most recently, we purchased four s191 models, with a fifth to be delivered in 2017. All of these machines are currently running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Growth: “Bumotec machines have enabled us to successfully pursue our strategy of diversifying our sectors of activity”

Bumotec centres make up half of your machine inventory. What led you to make that choice?

Ahmed El Yamani: Initially, we opted for Bumotec because the company and its products already had a good presence in Switzerland, particularly in the watch-making sector. Furthermore, to be listed with these large groups, we have to be able to offer them the same level of equipment that they have in-house, with the same level of quality and accuracy. Also, Bumotec machines have enabled us to successfully pursue our strategy of diversifying our sectors of activity as they offer a wide range of machining possibilities whilst optimising the costs per manufactured part. The second main reason was the aftersales service. We have encountered huge problems with maintenance on some of the competitor machines that we own and, as a result, one of our criteria for selecting suppliers is the quality of their service. Bumotec offers a quick, efficient and high-quality service. The number of machines we have acquired stands as clear evidence of this efficiency. Any time we need an intervention or maintenance, their service team always find the right solution in record time. With production running at the kind of rate we currently have, we can’t afford any unscheduled machine downtime. Moreover, their team of »application experts« is easy to contact and always available to actively provide input on any test and set-up projects we may wish to implement. Lastly, I would say that Bumotec manufactures reliable, accurate machines that enable us, as subcontractors, to provide our customers with clean parts, with no burrs or retouching required, even for the highly complex parts we produce.

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Can you give us a concrete example of a part manufactured on an s191H?

Ahmed El Yamani: I could cite many examples, but here is one from the world of luxury goods: a cufflink made from titanium. The challenge for this part was that all of the six faces had to be machined in a single production cycle to enable us to remain competitive. We won this contract thanks to the capabilities of the s191 machine which, with its re-taking unit, enabled us to machine the six faces in a cycle time of under 15 minutes, resulting in a part ready to be dispatched to the customer, using milling, contouring, drilling and tapping techniques… in a single clamping position. Without the performance of this machine, we would have needed to split the machining operations across several production units, causing the costs to rocket and giving a fourfold increase in the average production time for each part, not to mention the loss of output when setting up the multi-fixture operations. Another factor is that titanium is a highly flammable material during the production process, so this is another reason why we only use s191 models to machine it, as they are equipped with integrated extinguishers.


What are your projects and plans for 2017?

Ahmed El Yamani: Our mediumterm strategy consists of continuing, through the expansion of our activities, to update our machine inventory so that we can benefit from the technical possibilities of the latest new developments. As concerns our quality strategy, we have recently renewed our ISO 9001 certification and are now preparing for the 2015 version. In commercial terms, we will be attending the EPHJ 2017 show, as we do every year, from 20 to 23 June, to demonstrate the production options we offer. 

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