Horizons Customer Magazine 2025
A Tooling Discussion: Delivering a Competitive Advantage–Worldwide
When you arrive on the Feintool website, you’re presented with this statement:
“As the global leader in fineblanking, forming, and electrolamination stamping, we are shaping tomorrow’s technology today at 17 locations worldwide.”
That’s a bold statement. What does it take to be able to say that Feintool is “shaping
tomorrow’s technology today”?
We asked Lars Reich, Business Unit Leader Forming & Fineblanking Europe, CSO and Jens-Uwe Karl, VP Engineering, Feintool U.S. Operations to discuss what’s behind the competitive advantages that Feintool tooling systems deliver.
What is the basis of the advantage Feintool creates for its tooling customers?
Lars: Tooling is the heart of achieving close tolerances and increasing reliability, which drives competitiveness in manufacturing today. That’s why our tooling systems and fineblanking know-how is crucial. It’s the DNA of every functional critical component our customers produce and Feintool designs and builds every tool in-house 100%.
Why is it so critical that Feintool builds all tooling in-house?
Jens-Uwe: If you don’t have the capabilities in-house, it creates long lead times and turnaround, resulting in higher costs. Further, the communication between the various parties involved becomes really complicated. Feintool has everything under one roof—engineering, prototyping, design and production. All of this makes us more efficient, saving time and costs for our customers.
Besides having the ability to engineer and build tooling in-house, what other advantages does working with Feintool deliver?
Lars: Feintool has a unique competitive advantage in the tooling industry: we are the only fineblanker and forming company that covers all three continents. With technology centers in Switzerland, North America and Japan, we have invested again and again to be able to deliver local support for our customers. We design, build, test and optimize tooling systems in-house for our clients all around the world.
What does the process of tooling design, production and delivery look like for a Feintool customer?
Jens-Uwe: The great thing is that the process is the same at any of our technology centers around the world. Starting with engineering, we make method plans for tools and tool concepts using the latest in 3D design. When we have a finished design, we are able to build those tools in-house, immediately, which decreases lead times. We machine all the components, assemble, test and optimize the tooling systems prior to delivery.
Lars: The key for our customers to derive the most value from working with Feintool is to involve our team early on. Bring us prototypes. Let us work together to design the parts for the best manufacturability and lowest cost. Each technology center has unique capabilities for prototyping, simulation and early development of components, so we can work locally with any plant and every customer.
What kind of results have Feintool customers seen with their tooling systems?
Lars: Starting the process early makes an incredible difference. For example, on a seating application, we went from two-out to four-out, to six-out to eight-out, cutting the costs by 15% to 20% on the component. This was done through the complete engineering and development effort we did together with the client in their local technology center.
What customers need to realize is how significantly fineblanking has evolved. We are able to produce more and more three-dimensional parts with a significant amount of forming. It’s no longer just for the two-dimensional, easy components. This is because our tooling has evolved due to the immense engineering behind it.
What you get is a fineblanking solution that achieves machined-part tolerances with the cost of a stamping process. In a nutshell, that’s what fineblanking tooling from Feintool delivers.