Tell me a little bit about the history of Luren. I understand you are based out of Taiwan.
Yes, that is correct. We are located in Hsinchu City, Taiwan, which is the center for technology and research for Taiwan. We set up Luren in 1994 with the idea of making gear cutting tools for the local gear companies. As our reputation for quality and reliability increased, so did our orders from gear manufacturers around the world. Very early on we started making machines for our own internal manufacturing use. This increased our production capabilities while keeping our manufacturing costs low. As we continued to make machines as we needed them, we also found that our machines were performing as well and even in some cases better than their much more expensive counterparts. Starting from a group of eight gear engineers in 1994, we have grown to over 250 employees with three dedicated manufacturing facilities in Taiwan. Our strength as a company is definitely our gear engineers.
Are there many manufacturing companies like yours in Taiwan?
No, Luren is the only company in Taiwan that manufactures gear cutting tools and gear grinding machines. Because of this fact we are able to attract some of the top gear engineers from our universities year after year. Taiwan’s experience in machine tool building is also reflective in that Taiwan is the fourth largest exporter of machine tools in the world. In general, Taiwan is quietly becoming a very trusted machine tool builder for many companies around the world.
Being the only company of your kind in Taiwan, how did you expand your business to such a broad, international market?
Originally we began making gear cutting tools for gear manufacturers just in Taiwan, and as our reputation grew from customer word of mouth, we also grew as a company. We started in Taiwan but we have grown to sell our products in Japan, China, Korea, Germany, Italy, the United States, and Canada. We have quietly gone about our business providing gear cutting tools and gear grinding machines to many satisfied customers around the world.
What kind of machines do you manufacture? What are their capabilities?
We make two types of profile gear grinders: A horizontal type that can grind up to 400 mm and a vertical type which can grind up to 1000 mm. We also make a very successful worm and thread grinding machine along with a multi-purpose hob sharpening machine, which can also sharpen shaving cutters, shaping cutters, and grind gears. We use high-end components like Fanuc controllers, linear motors, and direct drive motors to eliminate backlash and yield high precision results. We use an advanced system, which we’ve created, to design our gear-cutting tools, shavers, and gear grinding machines. We’ve also created the windows-based software that we use in all of our machine interfaces. This software calculates the data for the machine’s parameters and transfers these parameters to the Fanuc controller. Our machine success is due to our integrated machinery production system. We use this system to make all of our machines. In this system we control all of the steps of machine production, giving us the ability to check each stage of machine production on a regular basis. This allows us to continually improve our system to meet the more diversified and sophisticated needs of our customers.
The National Chung Cheng and the National Chiao Tung Universities, as well as support from the Taiwanese government, all play an integral role in the workforce of your company. Describe this relationship for our readers.
Luren was created in part by the urging of the government of Taiwan to have a local supplier of gear cutting tools. This project of making gear cutting tools actually started at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Hsinchu, Taiwan. ITRI is a government funded research facility created to keep Taiwan competitive in the world market. I was the engineering manager in charge of this project and I sought out support from the local universities and gear manufacturers in Taiwan. Both Chiao Tung University and Chung Cheng University played important roles in providing valuable resources for us along with ITRI, to accomplish our task of making gear cutting tools for Taiwan. There were eight total engineers that came from ITRI to create Luren and even today many of our engineers and technicians still have spent time with ITRI before joining Luren. This relationship between Luren, ITRI, Chung Cheng University and Chiao Tung University is very valuable to us because every year we have the opportunity to add experienced and educated employees to our work force. We currently have eight employees with PHD’s in different disciplines working for Luren. Our roots came from the ITRI, Chung Cheng University, and Chiao Tung University. We see the importance in continuing these relationships to not only support them, but to continue to work with them on new projects. In return, they offer us well-trained and highly educated employees.
MORE INFORMATION: Visit Luren on the web at www.luren.com.tw or call Headquarters +886-3-5786767. You can also contact Luren Precision Chicago Co., Ltd. at 847-882-1388.
