For Hardinge, harvesting IMTS orders is result of years of prep.

Last month's International Manufacturing Technology Show in Chicago was, for Hardinge Inc. as for most exhibitors, a very upbeat milestone. Combine a solid 92,000 attendance with a steadily growing U.S. economy and well into the recovery from a years-long drought for the machine-tool industry, and you get glowing reports of buyers ready to place orders.

At Hardinge (Elmira, N.Y.), one of the top-five U.S. headquartered machine-tool builders, the show not only met company managers' high expectations but more than doubled them. With nearly 400 machine orders, "everyone is extremely pleased with the outcome and looks forward to building on the momentum for months to come," smiles Paula Ameigh, North American sales director.

Introduction of a new flagship SR-series turning center certainly generate excitement at the booth. But in many ways IMTS-2006 represented a culmination of a years-long strategy that, notes CEO Patrick Ervin, is actually very simple. It goes back to the early 1990s, perhaps a little before, he told reporters at the show, "Expand the product line, and expand share."

Acquisitions have been a key part of that strategy for what had been a well-respected if relatively sedate old-line American player with a solid reputation in precision lathes and workholding equipment. Purchase of the Kellenberger grinder product was the first, in 1995. Since then other Swiss grinding lines were added in the form of the HTT Hauser Tripet Tschudin group, to be followed by the Bridgeport mills and their related British machining centers. More recently the 100-year-plus American builder bought out its partner in its Taiwan subsidiary.

While the expansions have moved Hardinge offerings into broader classes of metalcutting machines, they've stayed in the same size range. "It's not our plan to go into very large machines," Ervin says. "We'll stay within a small- to medium-size cube.

"These are basic machines, and that market is not going away," Erwin continues. "People are buying these machines for specific, limited applications. At the same time we want to be able to offer the highest-end technology available, whether it's turning, milling, or grinding." The company president and chairman points to the new SR lathes as "the most accurate machines we've ever made."

Further helping expand product-line offerings, the Hardinge Bridgeport brands earlier this year introduced new value based machine models. Three different product ranges are now distinguished by colored vertical stripes on the left edge or the machine face: red-and-blue for the high-precision, high-performance machines; blue for "workhorse" machines' and gray for "feature-rich machines at a value price."

Yet another aspect of policy is geographic diversity. Hardinge manufactures at two companies in Switzerland, in Taiwan, in China, and in upstate New York. That represents a good mix in manufacturing, according to Erwin, who adds that "when China gets up to speed, I envision that we'll probably move to India next. That's not in six months or so, but that will be our next area, because if we're going to supply products to those markets, it's my opinion that you have to manufacture within those markets. You're not going to be cost-competitive without doing that. So we'll continue to move around the world where our customers move."

Hardinge Inc., Elmira, N.Y. 800-843-8801.