MANUFACTURING CAMPUS TOURS

Attendees also toured Mazak's Production-On-Demand North American Manufacturing Plant, which is in the midst of an expansion and the first in the machine tool OEM industry to convert over to the MTConnect open communications protocol. Tour participants saw 11 new machine models involved with the expansion of the facility, including the QUICK TURN ZENITH 250MY-2T, as well as seven other models in various stages of development and those with standalone robotic automation.

Mazak has been successfully manufacturing in Kentucky since 1974, and many of the machines on display at DISCOVER 2013 come from the Blue Grass State. When the plant expansion is complete in 2014, the total floor space at Mazak's manufacturing campus will span more than 800,000 square feet and increase the production capacity of this site from 140 machines per month to as many as 200, depending on product mix.

Other campus tours involved seeing the continued investment in and improvement of Mazak's North American Parts Center, which now has two fully automated vertical lift module storage systems that boosts small-parts capacity as well as a new rack system that provides 286 more pallets of large-part storage when compared to the one it replaced. As a result, Mazak now has one of the industry's largest inventories of spare parts and can ensure 97 percent same-day shipping on part orders.

Overall, Mazak wanted DISCOVER 2013 to serve as a unique opportunity for attendees to expand their metalworking knowledge as well as experience a wide range of total manufacturing solutions, not just new machines. According to Papke, the Mazak team and its industry partners put in a lot of hard work to ensure the event turned out to be like no other. "Because of our dedicated staff and partners, DISCOVER 2013 was a great success where attendees learned how to properly implement the latest technologies and processes, as well as how to improve part quality, shorten lead times, reduce operational costs and achieve the lowest cost of ownership," he noted.