Talking Points with Sandvik’s VP of Global Sales

Michael Eneberg, vice president global sales and marketing for Sweden-based AB Sandvik Coromant, started his career at the Sandvik Group in Sandviken, Sweden, in 2003. He then went to work at Sandvik Tooling and Sandvik Coromant Japan, later becoming head of Sandvik Coromant Indonesia and managing director for Sandvik Indonesia. Prior to his most recent position as CEO for Diamond Tools Group, Eneberg was the general manager for Sandvik Coromant’s sales area South Asia, where he held responsibility for India, Japan and Southeast Asia. He was also managing director for Sandvik Japan during this time.

In an interview with CTE Editor-at-Large Alan Richter at IMTS 2024, Eneberg spoke about “sensorized” cutting tools, the habits that lead to manufacturing wellness, sustainability and the North American cutting tool market.

The conversation was edited for length, clarity and style guidelines.

Cutting Tool Engineering: What are the benefits of cutting tools with sensors?

Eneberg: We’ve always been trying to help our customers get more parts out the door, and sensorized tooling, which is now selling and moving fast, is a natural progression of our productivity message. An example is the internal boring bar. What that sensorized tool is doing is telling you inside a deep borehole, often in a difficult-to-machine material what’s going on with vibration, chip breaking and tool condition. That helps you to basically increase your feeds, but sometimes you dial back on the feed just to have secure machining. This information can give you the security to go a little bit more aggressive, especially in difficult-to-machine materials where usually you have low feeds and speeds. Now we talk about shaping the future together, very much in that direction.

Cutting Tool Engineering: What does manufacturing wellness encompass?

Eneberg: What I really like about manufacturing wellness — a little bit similar to sensorized tooling — is it’s a natural progression of our productivity message. Manufacturing wellness is partially a summary of all the values we try to bring to the customer. Kind of their perfect state of being. We talk about many habits, take a holistic approach, embrace new technology, choose a sustainable path and eliminate waste. We have clearer messaging around it, a clear purpose around it. Then, of course, we have to choose a sustainable path. You have eliminated waste, which is an area where we are getting much clearer around. We talk about the different scopes of the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBT). Scope one is our own operation, and then we have scope two and scope three, which is downstream with the customer and upstream with the supplier for control and alignment on emissions. For us it’s an important part of our support activities. We also have this in the manufacturing wellness. We feel that we are well aligned with many major customers, especially in Europe. They have sustainability activity targets as a kind of supplier qualification because they are also trying to secure emissions upstream in their separation. It’s a nice mix of what we’ve been trying to do for quite some time.