Cyclicality is well-known phenomenon in many capital goods industries. It is especially pronounced in the machine tool industry where peak-to-peak in incoming orders often exceed 100% of mean sales. While extreme cyclicality in the machine tool industry and its resulting problems are well documented (Bowen et al. 1989: Dertouzos, Lester and Solow 1989: Neary 1993), the underlying causes and the potential levers to reduce it are so far not well understood.