A family-run operation preserves tradition with modern digital tools.

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The Cremina classic lever-operated espresso machine. We like the “Swiss” red one pictured here. (Right) The Cremina modeled in Solid Edge. (Image: Felix Wey/ Schätti AG Metallwarenfabrik.)

Thomas Schätti and his brothers, all mechanical engineers, run multiple family businesses from their headquarters in Glarus, Switzerland under the family name, Schätti AG Metallwarenfabrik. Jos Schätti is the eldest and president of Schätti, and Stefan Schätti is COO. They were introduced to Olympia Express, makers of espresso coffee grinders, which appealed to Thomas Schätti on several levels. Schätti had always loved the mechanical aspects of mechanical engineering, and also loved the aesthetics of industrial design, having studied both subjects. Top that off with his love of espresso, and it seemed like a no-brainer for the brothers to invest in Olympia Express in 2011 and install Thomas as CEO to run it.

The Schätti brothers were exposed to business and mechanical engineering at an early age as their grandfather ran a sheet metal business in the 1940’s, which their father eventually took over. When asked why they became mechanical engineers, Schätti said they were “conditioned” by the family business as they grew up learning the trade by working on machines and doing stamping, milling, painting and welding. “We were conditioned, but we were also technically interested, and it suited us,” said Schätti.

The Schätti brothers took over the family business together in the early 1990’s, which Schätti said was tough at times; as you can imagine, the three brothers occasionally butted heads.

Today the family business is 90 years old, and they continue to pride themselves on family tradition and quality. The core business continues to revolve around design and manufacturing of products made from sheet metal, including electrical household appliances, components and devices for ventilation technology, as well as fittings and mechanisms for furniture, white goods and mechanical and apparatus engineering. They also currently design and manufacture the Olympia Express machines, since taking over the brand in 2011.

The Olympia Express brand goes all the way back to 1928, started by Italian Luigi Bresaola who ran the Olympia Café in the border town of Italy in Switzerland. “He was technically very gifted,” said Schätti. “He was northern Italian from Trieste, which is one of the most important places for coffee as well. He started a coffee bar [in Switzerland] and he was not happy with the coffee machine, so he started to design his own coffee machines.”

After making his machines available to cafes and restaurants under the name Olympia Express, he started offering espresso machines for home use.

Today the Schätti brothers design and manufacture the Olympia Express machines in house as they continue to combine the company’s passion for Italian espresso and the old tradition of Swiss craftsmanship. They make machines that are built to last, as the tanks are made out of chrome steel. We’re talking built to last for decades, as “50-year-old Olympias” are still a highly sought after machine and often kept in the family and passed down from generation to generation.

Olympia Express uses Solid Edge from Siemens, and Schätti said when they took over the company the previous owners had designed in 2D, so the data was not very useful to them. They remodeled all the parts of the machine in Solid Edge and made new models as well as spare parts. Essentially, they started fresh and built a complete data engineering set. Since then, they’ve made various design iterations and improvements to the machines.

Schätti said overall they have kept the analog look of the machine. He said while some companies might focus on innovation and progression and changing the look, Olympia Express has stuck to the traditional appearance of their machines while also increasing the choice of materials to provide the highest quality product possible.

Though Schätti’s combined businesses have around 12 employees in the engineering department, Olympia Express only requires one engineer. Schätti said Solid Edge is extremely easy to learn and includes helpful tutorials within the interface. They have also developed an in-house tutorial for their draftsman interns, typically ages 15 to 16, where they cover the fundamentals of Solid Edge, enabling them to model a small mechanism and produce a drawing within three days.

To illustrate how easy it is to learn Solid Edge, Schätti uses his daughter as an example. She was able to design and 3D print a tamper base, pictured below.

He said one of the benefits 3D modeling with Solid Edge provides is that it speeds up the design process and reduces the number of prototypes. They can easily model and quickly 3D-print a prototype to get a better feel of the components in various materials.

Since they use a lot of sheet metal in the machines, having a tool like Solid Edge that includes a module for sheet metal was very important to the company.

They also use Teamcenter for design review and to manage design revisions. “It becomes even more important to be able to maintain the data than for the engineer to create it,” said Schätti.

He said they also use the rendering capabilities for internal communications. In addition, they sometimes service machines that are 50 or 60 years old, so they are very fond of the exploded views capability in Solid Edge. With exploded views, they can provide documentation on how to assemble and also how to service the machines so the servicing department can see which spare parts they need and how to replace them. “That’s where Solid Edge has proven very helpful, as well: making exploded views to create documentation on how to replace parts and how to assemble them initially,” he said.

These high-tech machines may not be for everyone as they command a hefty price. They start around US $3,000. They offer three machines (available in three colors) and one of the most sought after is the Olympia Express Cremina. The New York Times wrote the “Cremina 67, a lever-operated machine designed in 1967, is ‘the best Espresso machine in the world.’”

In addition, Olympia Express offers an updated version, the Cremina SL, and the Maximatic semiautomatic machine that provides espresso in just a few steps. Lastly, they offer the Moca espresso grinder.

Despite the name and logo, Schätti said Olympia Express is more in the “slow foods” category. “It’s more of a celebration to make coffee and make an espresso as it takes time to prepare it. And the quality of course, it’s really good. It’s like the small machines can really make coffee like the quality of a barista machine in an Italian coffee bar,” said Schätti. “The size is just a fraction of the professional machine, but it is built like a professional machine. The materials are the same as in the big machines the baristas have. It’s like having a home barista.”

About the price, Schätti said if coffee is important to you, you will spend a lot of money on a coffee machine if it’s the right one for you. He often justifies it to his mountain biking friends saying it’s similar to how they spend five or six grand on a mountain bike.

He said the Olympia Express machines are definitely on the wish list of many serious coffee lovers. Most must save up to make the purchase.

Schätti also has a wish list for Solid Edge. What Schätti said he’d like to see in Solid Edge is the ability to test temperature stability better. “Temperature stability is a very, very, very important point and temperature control is a very important thing in coffeemaking and maintaining a stable temperature. We are lucky that we inherited machines that can hold a temperature. But if you want to design new machines you must in fact reach the same quality level and simulating temperature distribution and flow would be really helpful. It’s on our wish list.”

Speaking of wish lists, the Olympia Express machine is on ours at engineering.com.

Visit Siemens to learn more about the Solid Edge for Startups program.