History of Hurco Interviews
Our co-founder, Gerald V. Roch, inventor, innovator, pioneer, husband, father, grandfather, and great grandfather, died at the end of 2020. Due to the pandemic, the ceremony commemorating his incredible life was delayed until late summer of 2021. Below are the video interviews with Mr. Roch that were conducted to commemorate the 45th Anniversary of Hurco in 2013. While Mr. Roch wasn’t directly involved with Hurco for years, his legacy of continuous innovation to make job shops more efficient and more profitable is the foundation of the company he started in 1968. All of us at Hurco are appreciative of the culture he built. I hope you enjoy these interviews.
VIDEO #1 | Interview with Mr. Roch
In Part 1 of our video interview with Mr. Roch, he tells us about all the events—good and bad—that led him to start Hurco. There are many colorful stories that explain why and how he quit his job in protest as an industrial engineer at the family business. He tells us about his job as a sales rep for E.L. Humston and how the eight years he spent visiting shops of all sizes throughout Indiana got him thinking about all kinds of products he could invent that would make shops more productive, more efficient, and ultimately, more profitable.
You won’t want to miss Mr. Roch talking about the biggest problem with being a sales rep driving 50K miles a year and how he tried to solve it. When he ended up in a corn field in the middle of Indiana, he knew he needed a new career.
VIDEO #2 | Interview with Mr. Roch
In Part 2 of our video interview with Mr. Roch talks about the first product he invented at Hurco, how the company almost folded within the first two years, and he foreshadows the control technology that would ultimately create CNC machining technology as we know it today.
VIDEO #3 | Interview with Mr. Roch
In Part 3 of our video interview with Mr. Roch talks about his greatest weakness: "I always had too many ideas for my pocketbook" and gives us insight about the other co-founder of Hurco, Mr. Ed Humston. Mr. Roch also reminisces about his second product introduction, Compu-Cut, and why it wasn't profitable.
Video #4 | Interview with Mr. Roch
This is the fourth and final video of our 2013 interview with Mr. Roch, the co-founder of Hurco. In this video he talks about the invention that changed everything: conversational programming (a programmable control for milling machines that was easy for the operator to program—a control to go on a Bridgeport type of milling machine).
He showed his prototype at IMTS 1974, which he said, “Was a little gutsy.” He also talks about his broken relationship with Bridgeport and gives a great history of control technology in addition to explaining how one person saved the company: a board member who asked if he had collected on any of his patents.
Introduction | The History of Hurco | 2013 Interviews with Gerald V. Roch, Co-Founder of Hurco
Gerald V. Roch, the co-founder of Hurco, sat down with me to record the history of Hurco to commemorate our 45th Anniversary. During our conversation, I realized how enduring his presence has been at Hurco and how those early years of Hurco have shaped the culture. First and foremost, the absolute respect and admiration the people at Hurco have for machinists, and the companies they have built—even those of us who had never stepped foot in a machine shop in our lives prior to working at Hurco. Our goal is to make the job of making parts as efficient as possible so these businesses can increase profitability. This core mission is due to Mr. Roch’s experience with machining and his unique passion to invent technology that simplifies the work of the machinist.
Chapter 1: Before Hurco
Mr. Roch has machining in his blood—he grew up in a family that owned 30 percent of a 200 man job shop called EMPCO (Engineering Metal Products Company), which was initially started by his grandfather. EMPCO manufactured all kinds of products from iron—staircases, railings, etc., but test cells they built for Allison is the project Mr. Roch says kept him interested in the manufacturing industry.
“One of the things that led me to this industry in addition to growing up around my grandfather’s shop, which was later my dad’s shop, was the time we built eight test cells for Allison. These were 20 feet in diameter and 60 feet long. We had to haul them to Allison’s on two semi-trailers—one going forward and one going backward. We had to take down stop lights and shore up a bridge. It was really neat. I was still young, this was in the early 50s and it made an impression on me.”
Mr. Roch spent his childhood around his grandfather’s shop and later worked there during summer vacations. After he graduated with a degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University, he went to work full-time for EMPCO. Both he and his brother worked at the family business where Mr. Roch created a small Industrial Engineering Department.
More than an engineer or a businessman, Mr. Roch is an inventor. Inventors by nature don’t accept the status quo. They are risk takers. They solve problems. They change the world. Often, this leads to great new products and inventions. Sometimes this refusal to accept the status quo leads to unemployment.
“My dad’s partners decided to hire a new president and after he was there about a year, I knew this guy wasn’t going to succeed,” explained Mr. Roch, who added that this new president changed the organizational structure three times in one year, which he felt wasn’t conducive to maintaining a solid business environment.
“So, I got my brother and some of the other sons of my dad’s partners to overthrow the regime. But they wouldn’t let me,” he said with a twinkle in his eye and the ornery grin of a teenager.
“After I hit a brick wall…neither my dad nor his partners would change direction…I quit my job without another job. It was 1961 and my wife just about had a fit... no income…a new home we were heavily in debt for…I searched for a number of months for a job and finally landed at E.L. Humston.”
E.L. Humston was a distributor who sold press brakes and shears. Later, the company sold machining equipment. Mr. Roch went on the road for eight years. He logged 50,000 miles a year traveling throughout Indiana. “During my experience calling on manufacturing companies large and small, I saw opportunities to increase productivity. I started to design little things to add to machine tools to make them more productive,” said Mr. Roch.
There was one problem with his job as a sales rep that was potentially hazardous to his health. “In the midst of this eight years, I fell asleep every day driving. I just couldn’t stay awake,” said Mr. Roch. His boss, Ed Humston, even bought him a device that was placed on the steering wheel to alert him when he fell asleep.
“When the steering wheel would lock, an alarm would go off… I only ran off the road once. I woke up in a corn field…I didn’t hurt anybody, but after eight years on the road, I talked to Ed about starting a shop. He said he would go in with me.”
Chapter 2: The Beginning of Hurco
In the fall of 1968, Mr. Roch and Mr. Humston each put in $2,500 to start HURCO (Humston Roch Companies). “I had 12 shares and he had 12 shares. We worked out an agreement that I would run it for six months and if we didn’t meet certain tests then I would give up control to Ed and then he would run it. Well, I didn’t meet the test, but Ed didn’t want to run it, so I kept running the company,” said Roch.
Autobend was the first idea Mr. Roch had for a product. To appreciate the value of Autobend, one needs to realize what technology wasn’t available in 1968. There wasn’t anything like a ball lead screw or an encoder (the optical device that measures how many degrees a ball lead screw turns so in turn you could measure how far you had advanced linearly.) “None of that existed,” explained Mr. Roch who taught me how fabrication for press brakes worked before his AutoBend product. “The age old way was to set up gages on a bar that is attached to the press brake and you have mechanical stops. You make a bend. Then, you reset the gages to different dimensions, and make another bend. What Autobend gave fabricators was the ability to make it without resetting gages over and over so they could make a complete part.”
To develop Autobend, Mr. Roch used a punched metal tape and a counting device to measure how far the gage was moving. He used a tandem cylinder with air in one cylinder and hydraulics in the cylinder underneath the first one. “The idea was that you shifted the air valve which would push the gages or pull them back. Once you reached a certain distance, the encoding device signaled the control to stop the gages and then a valve would close and that would hold the position of the gages,” said Mr. Roch.
Chapter 3: The First Setback
He was all set to demonstrate his first new product at a show at The Coliseum in Indianapolis in May when he discovered a problem: the gages weren’t tracking parallel to each other. But true inventors never give up. Determined to demonstrate Autobend at the May 1969 show, he put a little valve in the circuit as an emergency fix and one of his five employees (who would later be promoted to the VP of Service) sat in back of the press brake to make the gages track parallel so they could demonstrate the product at the show.
Figuring out a makeshift solution to demonstrate his product at the show was the least of his worries. He had already sold two Autobend press brakes for $10,500 each: one to a company in Wabash, Indiana, and the other to the General Electric Transformer division in Fort Wayne.
“They reported the gages didn’t track parallel. We had a real problem on our hands. We didn’t have any money…well almost no money. I borrowed more money from my dad, who had retired. We could barely keep the business going. I had to figure out how to balance this heat problem to make the gages run parallel,” Mr. Roch recollected with intensity.
The solution to this problem was eluding Mr. Roch and the company was in jeopardy. “I just couldn’t come up with the idea and there were five us in the company at the time. I decided we needed some job shop work to keep us going. We had a milling machine and a saw and I knew I had to get some income to keep the company afloat.”
Chapter 4: The First Salvation of Hurco
On his way to visit a large company in downtown Indianapolis to get some job shop work, the solution came to him.
“I was on Capitol Avenue and suddenly I had an idea on how to equalize the chambers. I worked the weekend and came up with a clever little valve device that would make the gages track parallel. And it worked! That was the first saving of the company. We began to sell the gages and we began to get distributors who were agreeable to represent us,” recalled Mr. Roch.
He got a patent for Autobend and there were three design iterations. The first Autobend had an air/hydraulic tandem cylinder; the second had a hydraulic/hydraulic tandem cylinder; and the final design had a ball lead screw. But the control would be the foundation of Hurco and would undergo many design iterations.
The first Autobend control was a series of little PC boards that was built by an engineer in Boston, which Mr. Roch said was the center of electronics in the 1960s. He had difficulty finding an engineer who would entertain his idea, but finally an engineer named Ed Sohn undertook the challenge.
“At that time, all of the things we take for granted today were not there. Ed had these little cards that were hand wired and put them into this control and six banks of thumb wheel switches. So, for each dimension you wanted, you dialed in the thumb wheel. The gage would go from one set of thumb wheel switches to another automatically,” explained Mr. Roch.
In the midst of developing Autobend, Mr. Roch didn’t have the luxury of simply inventing. He had a business to run. He and Mr. Humston incorporated the company in February of 1969 and they held a private stock offering later that year.
“We had a private stock issue of convertible debentures. I had to go to a little school to learn how to sell stock. I had a flip chart that I used to sell the company and we sold $169K of stock to 21 people. The most anyone put in was $20K.”
The drive to invent continually won over the desire to make money. “The problem was I was never focused on profit. I was always focused on inventing new things. As a result of that, I ignored the advice of my CFO for instance. The best CFO I ever had was Alan McClean, who was a Vietnam veteran and had both of his legs blown off. He had two artificial legs. He walked without a cane and drove a car. He had to have a valve in his right leg so when he pressed on the accelerator, he had to push his stump in order to force his foot forward on the accelerator and then he had to reach down and cock the valve to slow down. He drove me through the Swiss Alps like that! He was just a wonderful man. He was a wonderful Christian man and a really, really bright guy. He was a graduate of Harvard and Stanford. He told me to slow down and stop inventing and focus more on profit. I unwisely talked him out of it every time.”
Mr. Roch found himself in the Swiss Alps with his CFO Mr. McClean because they had decided they needed to tap into the European market in order to grow sales of Autobend once they had the ball lead screw design.
“Europe was a bigger market and at that time we had maybe 10 or 12 distributors in the USA. This was in 1973,” recalled Mr. Roch. On one of those trips overseas, Mr. Roch invented another product he had been mulling over.
Chapter 5: Compu-Cut
“On the way overseas on the airplane, I conceived of an idea that would become Compu-Cut, a 2-axis shearing machine.”
The method of shearing at the time created a tremendous amount of waste whereas the 2-axis shearing machine allowed for different sizes to be cut out of a large sheet of metal. When he returned from his trip overseas, Mr. Roch sold his first 2-axis shearing machine to Arvin Industries with just the sketch he had made.
“They made a lot of sheet metal parts. They could see the scrap savings they would get. They bought the first one for $72K, which that was a lot of money. We delivered it six months later.”
Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
“Meanwhile they had paid us the $72,000. I told them, ‘I know what our problem is and I will redesign but it will take me at least a year to make the next one.’ So they let me do it. They didn’t take me to court or anything. So, we redesigned it and made it hydraulic. The first one was operated with an air bag that pushed the shear blade down and it wasn’t powerful enough, wasn’t fast enough, the frame wasn’t heavy enough. The second one cost us over $100,000 to make but we delivered it and obviously didn’t charge them any more money. We built nine of those machines. We lost lots of money on those…we had to buy these big horizontal milling machines to build these silly Compu-Cuts…but we built them and sold them. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make any money off them. So we decided to sell the idea. We sold the idea to a large machine tool company called Warner and Swazey. They had a subsidiary in Japan that made them for awhile. Eventually, the technology was replaced by laser cutting. The little laser could cut this out with no problem.”
Chapter 6: Invention of the Interactive Control
Constant throughout his journey inventing products and running Hurco, Mr. Roch respected the expertise of others and sought their help to make his dreams come to fruition.
“I’ve never known much about electronics or software, I’ve just always been an idea guy. I was fortunate enough to find the people or hire the people that knew how to make things work that I had this dream of creating,” said Mr. Roch.
One of those times was when he sought counsel from the original investors at a meeting he held at the offices on Guion Road in 1971.
“Autobend had been the thing that has kept us going all along, but I wanted to do something beyond Autobend because it was too small. I had 10 or 12 ideas in written form of different things we could make. One of them was a self programmable control for milling machines, which was intended to go on a Bridgeport-type mill. All of these guys were metal fabricators, but they saw the opportunity of it being programmable by the operator. All but one voted for it. So, that started us on the development of our control,” recalled Roch.
To appreciate the significance of the invention Mr. Roch would undertake and its impact on the manufacturing world, one needs to understand the history of machining. At first, there were manual machines, called knee mills. Then, Pratt and Whitney introduced the Numerically Controlled mill that used punched paper tape. A machine shop would run the tape and it instructed the machine what moves to make. The paper tape was very, very long with holes punched on it. The shop had to have a reader, which read the holes and converted them into dimensions.
“That was the only mode of computer control at the time. We thought it wasn’t appropriate for small job shops to have to buy all that equipment so we came up with a magnetic tape instead of punched paper tape. The tapes were like microcassette tapes. So, our first control was run by microcassettes, which was very unusual at the time,” said Roch
Hurco showed its prototype of the first CNC machining center at IMTS 1974.
“We showed our prototype [of the integrated control] at IMTS which was kind of gutsy to do. We were able to get more distributors and more attention and so we started selling them until we became the biggest customer of Bridgeport mills (Bridgeport CT). That became so obnoxious to Bridegeport because they didn’t have a control…they sent me a letter with a big price increase. That was on a Friday. I called up our attorney, Gene Henderson, and the next day we were on a plane to Spain to find another supplier for our milling machines. That supplier ended up to be Kondia,” said Roch.
Hurco eventually sold 300-400 CNC machining centers a year. Each one was between $30K and $40K.
At Hurco, we have often said, “We put the C in CNC,” but we weren’t sure if we actually could claim that we invented the first CNC mill. “We had the first CNC. There is some debate about that because Cincinnati Milacron claimed they had the first one. But eventually our patent won out in court,” explained Mr. Roch.
Chapter 7: The Thrill of the Invention and the Agony of Financial Stress
The next big product expansion was the development of the twin screen control for the mill.
“To develop the twin screen control, we rented a facility along 79th Street. Once we got it finished, we were so excited about it that we had a big extravaganza for distributors down in Orlando, Florida. We rented part of a hotel down there to demonstrate the new control. We spent a lot of money because the advertising company I had developed a relationship with said we should really make a splash to get the distributors’ attention. When we unveiled the new UltiMax control, all these pictures popped up all over the stage. It was really neat. We walked away with $6 million in orders from those distributors at that one meeting. That was a lot of money, especially in 84 when times were really tough.”
But the country was in a recession and Hurco was losing money. At the same time, Japanese companies were infiltrating the market.
While the $6 million in orders at the Orlando event gave us a kickstart, we didn’t have enough volume to support our overhead at that time. We were losing money, and I made the decision to lower the price to maintain market share rather than losing market share to the Japanese, who were invading the market. So, we lowered the price to keep market share, but we started losing money big time. The directors on the Board were primarily guys I had sold stock to back in 1969, including our attorney Gene Henderson, and they were really under a lot of pressure. We owed the bank $10 million that we didn’t have,” Mr. Roch explained.
“So, I set up a meeting with the bank…Alan and I were sitting there and this one older banker, who was very experienced, started shouting at me, ‘What are we going to do?’ It was a really nasty meeting. He was right though, I had made a lot of wrong decisions. I kept developing new features and making the mill better without reducing costs,” relented Mr. Roch.
The downward spiral started in October of 1985. Mr. Roch said the Hurco Board of Directors got an offer from an east coast firm to put money into the company when it was really needed.
“But part of the deal was that I had to go…the Board offered me the job of Chairman of the company. No one would report to me. I had no assigned duties. They weren’t going to reduce my salary or anything. I thought about it for about three or four weeks and decided I couldn’t do it. So, I quit cold turkey,” explained Roch.
Within a week after his departure from his beloved Hurco, Mr. Roch was inventing again. This time his focus was completely on software. “I had this idea for manufacturing software, which would become Made2Manage. I went through the same development problem where I invented too many features and didn’t pay attention to the bottom line. With software, you can really get carried away,” exclaimed Mr. Roch.
Finally, Mr. Roch went full circle, and returned to his roots—he opened a job shop with his son-in-law, Joel Draper. His grandson Gabe Draper now runs Draper Manufacturing.
Chapter 8: Inside Stories from Mr. Roch
While reminiscing about Hurco’s survival, Mr. Roch credits venture capitalist Dick Niner as the savior of Hurco. Mr. Niner is one of the people who invested in Hurco during the tumultuous period in 1985, but his foresight to protect Hurco’s intellectual property was even more significant.
“Dick Niner saved the company. When we got in trouble…trouble that I caused in ‘84/85, Dick and two other fellows put money in the company. More than that, Dick Niner was the guy with the foresight and the smarts to get my patents collected on. He was the one that pushed for that. I got all kinds of patents but I wasn’t focused enough to collect on them,” said Mr. Roch.
Hurco created a subsidiary called IMS Technologies, which began negotiations to collect licensing fees from machine tool builders that had infringed on its patent. After all litigation was completed, Hurco collected more than $50 million on just one single patent: Patent No. 4,477,754 interactive programming of the machine tool on the machine shop floor.
All of the major machine tool companies settled out of court and took a license under the patent except Haas Automation, Inc.
Haas Automation, Oxnard, California, disputed the patent infringement charge and decided to go to court. Haas scored an initial and short-lived victory by convincing the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that the IMS patent was not infringed. But the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the trial court’s decision granting Haas’ motion for summary judgment of non-infringement was erroneous and that it should be reversed and sent back to the trial court for trial. The jury trial was divided into three parts. After a jury verdict in favor of Hurco on the first issue, Haas agreed to take a license and pay for past infringement.
Mr. Roch was retired during the patent infringement suits, but was still involved with Hurco as a director for the Board. As he reminisced about his career, he said he is proud that “little Hurco” has survived all of these years.
“Obviously, there has been a lot of consolidation. During my tenure, many of the big name companies didn’t survive. And here, little Hurco is still here,” said Roch.
While he won’t speculate on why other companies went out of business, he thinks the culture and the core mission of Hurco have played a part in the company thriving in a cyclical industry.
“I tried to create an atmosphere of having an enjoyable place to work that was also challenging. I think Mike and Greg and the other managers have done a good job of maintaining that. I don’t know why other bigger companies didn’t survive. We had a smaller product line and one that was unique. Our milling machine control is still unique…and continues to get more sophisticated,” explained Roch.
When asked what he liked best about his career and what was the most difficult, Mr. Roch said, “I liked all of it. I’ve always enjoyed working. I don’t think there has hardly been a day when I didn’t look forward to going to work. Although there were a few days when I thought the company wasn’t going to make it. There were days when I just didn’t want to get out of bed. But fortunately I’m just an old hack and I love to work…probably the most enjoyable time was when I would get to see an idea materialize and be marketable. Those were the times I enjoyed most…when an idea would become a commercial product. That was the most satisfying part of my career.”
Chapter 9: Hurco Today by Maggie Smith
A company’s culture is more of a feeling than a factual definition…it’s a vibe, a sense of purpose, priorities, a mission, maybe even a personality. I believe a company’s culture is molded by both success and failure. While interviewing Mr. Roch, I realized how his leadership—successes and failures—have shaped our culture here at Hurco.
Mr. Roch’s passion for machining and his entrepreneurial spirit, characteristics shared by our customers who are business owners themselves, have become an integral part of our culture. I believe the admiration and respect we have for our customers is due to Mr. Roch’s influence.
Mr. Roch also instilled an unspoken directive to “Make it right” and “Take Responsibility.” The world of product and technology innovation isn’t without glitches—as with Mr. Roch’s first AutoBend product when the gages wouldn’t track parallel and the first Compu-Cut that wasn’t powerful enough. He always took responsibility and made it right for his customers. But he never quit. It has been said that you must have the courage to fail in order to succeed. Setback after setback, failure after failure, Mr. Roch always kept moving forward…and that has become part of our culture, too. We are dedicated to continuous innovation…inventing new technologies and making new features easier, smarter, faster, so our customers’ businesses can be more productive and profitable.
Another attribute Mr. Roch contributed to the culture of Hurco is the old-fashioned work ethic. The first thing I noticed when I arrived at Hurco seven years ago was the industrious nature of this group of people—people who take pride in their work, have a strong work ethic, and enjoy working in general.
Our culture was also shaped by the challenges Mr. Roch faced many times in the early years: namely, the financial challenges.
The second thing I noticed when I joined Hurco was the fiscally conservative culture of the company—I don’t mean “cheap” but careful with the expense side of the equation (which was refreshing since I had worked at some extremely large companies that seemed to spend money like water).
When Mr. Doar became CEO in 2000, he and his team developed a strategic plan to strengthen the company’s financial position without sacrificing innovation. Because continually inventing new technologies that make customers more productive and more profitable is the centerpiece of Hurco, the company must be financially sound to continue product development in order to lead the technology revolution as Mr. Roch did.
By controlling non-product expenses and increasing supply chain efficiencies, Hurco returned to profitability. Fortunately, Hurco’s strong financial position has allowed us to continue inventing new products and technologies during the worst of economic times. Mr. Doar’s strategic plan also focused on targeted expansion of both new markets and new products, which helps us be focused on what matters: our customers.
As we embark upon the next 45 years, all of us at Hurco are so appreciative of the strong foundation Mr. Roch created and we work each day to continue his dream of creating products that make manufacturing more efficient.
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