Derek Phillips

Derek Phillips, Marketing Director of Stiles Machinery enlightens us on the current market, their participation in IWF, their presence in North America, integrated manufacturing and lot more.

woodandpaneleurope With more than 40 machines available for hands-on demonstration and over 150 team members here ready to answer visitors’ questions. If you can tell us whats your expectation from this show?
Derek Phillips: Yes, our expectations are pretty high I have to say that it has met and even exceeded. You know with the economy is responding the way, it is both in North America and globally, we expected to see a lot of traffic in the booth and we are surprised to find out that the traffic was strong and consistent from Day 1. So, we found a lot of volume coming to the booth, a lot of very interesting challenges that customers are facing. We are happy to provide the solution first and it has been amazing so far.
woodandpaneleurope Stiles has arraged a pre-registration facility for daily live demonstration slots in IWF. What if a visitor without registration request you to take a glance of live demo? Is it possible to arrange a demo for them?
Derek Phillips: Yes, absolutely. Here, at the show we are arranging video demonstrations, so you can stop by the booth at the front desk and talk to them and get signed up for a large demonstration here on site. We also have these demonstrations uploaded on to our website in all social media channels. So, people who are not even are here at the show can get the experience of demonstrations.
woodandpaneleurope Industry 4.0 being the buzzword of the industry, so, tell us how easy it is to embrace networked production for the small and medium sized companies?
Derek Phillips: We both Stiles and our parent company Homag have invested in technology that is easy to adopt, easy to programme, and easy to opted in an ongoing basis so we’ve not just created software for over our machines but really with TAPIO and our partnership their, we have a platform that allow our machines and machines that youhave bought from us or HOMAG to communicate with each other to each other, sharing data and identify the efficiency within your process. So, its a pretty exciting time, we have CEO from HOMAG, Mr. Pekka Passivara here yesterday for a press conference, where he talked about his vision and HOMAG’s vision around TAPIO and why it was recreated in the platform that opens to a other software system, not just our own.
woodandpaneleurope Can you give me some idea about your presence in Canadian market or Mexican market?
Derek Phillips: With HOMAG Canada we have first service office in Canada, Stiles in North America and United States, but very closely we are sister companies, we partner with each other very well. We had a presence down in Mexico for quite a long time and we reinvested our presence and for now we will not just sell in Mexico but also full service in there. So, we have a really good coverage across all the North America as Stiles and part of the Homag group of companies.
woodandpaneleurope Can you elaborate some of the service centers in North America because after sales service is someting really important for the companies like HOMAG I would say one of the best in terms of service?
Derek Phillips: Yes, sure. We have 150 field service representatives in the field. We invest heavily in service but also having 24/7 support through our phone system, having huge investment in the part so that when we say we are up and running and fast than anybody else. We can because we have 50 million dollars and parts in stock at all times as Stiles. So again, as we are continuing to reinvest in kind of expend our presence in Mexico we are offering that services as well to the mexican market. So again its first service across all of North America.
woodandpaneleurope As you know that Duetsche Messe is organising second time the show in Mexico in the mid of January and they will have a dedicated pavilion on German machines. So, do you think you will be participating there?
Derek Phillips:We are exploring all the demo conferences and woodworking shows and we talked about which shows we are going to participate. Go to down in Mexico , we will be announcing or really kind of revealing which shows we are going to participate in shortly.


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