may 30, 2009 12:38am

TAG Heuer investing in R&D

The leader for prestige watches and chronographs is investing massively in R&D and developing an in-house mechanical chronograph movement with automatic rewind, the new calibre 18, as it starts industrial production of the famous V4 that was presented as a watch concept at Baselworld 2004. To house the new industrial equipment, TAG Heuer has just opened an additional 3000 m2 of manufacturing space at La Chaux de Fonds and plans to further extend its production plant at Cornol.

Founded by Edouard Heuer in 1860, TAG Heuer has been a Swiss avant-garde watchmaker for almost 150 years. Its prestige sports counters, timepieces and chronographs have written some of the finest pages of Swiss watchmaking history, especially in relation to their precision and timekeeping. TAG Heuer is the only watchmaking brand in the world to offer precision timepieces accurate to 1/10th, 1/100th and 1/1000th of a second. Today TAG Heuer is the world leader for luxury chronographs and fourth in the world for top-of-the-range watchmaking. The company employs over 1000 people at its Swiss locations at La Chaux de Fonds and Cornol, and its 17 international subsidiaries. On the strength of its watchmaking success, the company decided to diversify the branded offering with its own range of reading and sun glasses, which was launched successfully in 2002, and its first communication tool, the up-market Meridiist mobile telephone which was launched a few months ago.

Since 2006, the site at La Chaux de Fonds has been the location of all the brand’s operations, including the various assembly units (T1, T2 and T3), logistics, R&D and all customer services. In January 2008, TAG Heuer opened an innovative museum, the “360o” that gives visitors a complete immersion experience of the brand’s universe. In September 2008, a new dedicated area was opened on the site in response to the brand’s global success. An extra 3000 m2 have been added to the existing 10,000 m2. More space and machinery were not the only requirements - know-how was also needed of course if a century and a half of mastery of the infinitely small is to be preserved. TAG Heuer has therefore acquired the professional skills that are vital to this level of manufacturing ambition: design engineers, industrial process engineers, fabricators, prototype makers, etc., have recently been recruited.

















In the last few years, TAG Heuer has developed a design and engineering specialist skill centre with an annual budget of several million Swiss Francs to help it meet its objectives as a manufacturing integrator and improve its responsiveness. The R&D department – fully independent in terms of making prototypes and carrying out tests - intends to remain at the forefront of technology and it is presently developing partnerships with the best universities, private research centres and aerospace industry research institutes. The main focal points of the R&D department’s work are researching new biocompatible materials with high engineering performance, technology transfer from the aerospace and automotive industries and the development of new mechanical escapements. As a result, the speed with which TAG Heuer files patent applications has suddenly accelerated in recent years: 60 patents have been filed since 1860, 16 in the past 4 years and 12 will be filed before the end of the year. And TAG Heuer is presently working on 150 major innovations which will become available over the next five years.

On the movement side, TAG Heuer has the biggest names in watchmaking as its suppliers and is cooperating with ZENITH and Dubois-Depraz for example to develop exceptional calibres. At the same time, the company is about to start industrial production of its 4th movement, calibre 18, the successor to

1) Calibre 360, the only mechanical movement capable of measuring and displaying 100th of a second,

2) Calibre S, the electromechanical movement composed of more than 230 parts and

3) V4, the revolutionary belt-drive mechanical movement, which is actively being developed for industrial production.

The new Calibre 18 is designed to meet the highest expectations in terms of time-keeping and precision. The new column chronograph, developed in-house, will be produced at a location close to the present industrial site at Cornol which, in time, will house a new workshop dedicated to making the mechanical parts of the future movement It will then be assembled on the TAG Heuer site at La Chaux de Fonds, increasing the number of mechanical movements available to the company for its luxury collection pieces by 2010.

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