Of course, he did draw our attention to a rapidly emerging technology. "Yes, there is something very new happening from the technology point of view - Additive manufacturing. We have already seen the first production machines popping up on the industrial side outside of the lab. But I am not so sure about. And I have a reason for saying this.

If you look at the kind of workpiece materials that people are using more and more in aerospace and automotive industries are absolutely different from the workpiece materials handled by additive manufacturing. There is actually a conflict. We have to see how that will evolve. Will additive machining become better to meet the requirements and manufacture nickel based alloys and composites? We have to see."

Interestingly from the people side, De Vos has another story. "The tools we have today are very powerful and I use the term tools in a very broad sense. These are very powerful means. But we do not always have the people who fully appreciate the power of these tools. People are not aware of the capacity of the tools that they have at their disposal."

To elaborate on his point, the metal cutting expert points out that despite the overall slowdown in the manufacturing world, there are also many manufacturing companies that are doing quite well. "So why is that happening and how are they immune to the market conditions? They are using the same machine tools and cutting tools as the rest of the manufacturing world and yet they are successful. The reason is the way they are using the tools. That's the differentiating factor," he said.

A common denominator - according to De Vos - is that companies who specialise are doing well. "I don't mean specialisation in terms of using certain workpiece materials or certain industry segments. Let me explain. If you look at the current manufacturing scenario then you will see some buzzwords around. These include productivity, economy, quality and versatility. What you see is that a large number of companies want to be all four. They want to be productive, economical, versatile and also machine quality products. I say that's impossible. If you want to be fast then that costs you more money.