Despite difficult economic conditions, SEAS has managed to successfully reposition itself as a mid-sized, globally operating equipment manufacturer and solutions provider by streamlining the organization and pooling all its support and coordination processes at its headquarters in Munich. The response to SEAS’s business process optimization and repositioning has been very positive among partners and SIPLACE customers alike, particularly as far as the company’s global presence and customer proximity are concerned.

Because of these positive developments, Siemens AG has started the next logical step in the carve-out process. SEAS will no longer report to Siemens AG via the Siemens division Drive Technologies, but directly as an independent entity.

SEAS CEO Günter Lauber welcomes this decision: "This next step in the carve-out process is important for us. It shows that we are moving in the right direction with our endeavors. It also means for my entire team and me: "full speed ahead" - with new innovative products, with outstanding software and services, and most of all with innovative manufacturing ideas for the electronics manufacturing industry."

Despite - or maybe because of - the global economic crisis, SEAS is banking on many new products that combine maximum flexibility with maximum performance on the line or even in a single machine. This strategy has already been implemented in the recently unveiled SIPLACE MultiStar CPP placement head, which combines the speed of chip shooters and collect-and-place with the versatility of pick-and-place in a single head that is capable of adapting to virtually all new requirements and products in electronics manufacturing and automatically balances entire production lines. "Only last week, independent panels of market experts confirmed that this head represents a major breakthrough by honoring the SIPLACE X-Series Powered by MultiStar with the coveted and highly respected EM Asia Innovation Award and the SMT China Vision Award on the occasion of the Nepcon Shanghai 2009 trade show," says Günter Lauber.

The SIPLACE team is proud of its new SIPLACE SX, which is not "merely" a new placement machine, but opens the door to new capabilities in terms of manufacturing concepts and logistics. Günter Lauber is excited about the new model: "This machine is exactly what the market needs right now. Our customers no longer want to be forced to replace entire line modules when their requirements change, because this approach takes too much time and money. Instead, they want to have the option to invest in either performance or capacity, for example, by adding or replacing only a few gantries. Our new SIPLACE SX meets precisely these requirements, because its speed and capacity can be modified independently by simply replacing or adding one or more gantries. As a result, the customer only pays for the services he really needs. With this approach, we pay tribute to the trend towards ever more flexibility, with the ultimate goal being the ability to economically produce lots as small as one unit."