Several major milestones came into play at this year's IMTS, which ran Sept. 10 – 15 at the McCormick Place in Chicago, IL. Not only did the show itself bring in 100,200 attendees from all over the world, making it the most successful manufacturing event in more than a decade, Mazak brought more to the IMTS show floor than ever before.
This year's show marked the first time we exhibited an unprecedented number of machines designed and built at our Kentucky Manufacturing Plant. Of the 22 fully powered machines cutting industry-specific components inside our massive new booth, these eight are proudly made at our Florence Campus: the new VERTICAL CENTER UNIVERSAL 400 and 400-5X, new VERTICAL CENTER NEXUS 530C-II TT, VERTICAL CENTER NEXUS COMPACT, new QUICK TURN NEXUS 250-II MSY-D, QUICK TURN NEXUS 450-II MY, new QUICK TURN ZENITH 250M-2T and ORBITEC 20.
Additionally, more expert Mazak applications engineers and interactive kiosks filled our exhibit space than previous years, providing attendees with valuable solution ideas for improving throughput, shortening lead times and boosting profitability. Furthermore, with the introduction of our new 3-4-5 productivity solution, creating highly optimized manufacturing systems for any type of shop environment became a hot topic of discussion inside our booth.
As it turns out, our increased investment in this year's show proved to pay off because we had a constant flow of shoulder-to-shoulder traffic come through our booth every day, enabling us to make several important business deals and surpass the total number of leads we generated from IMTS 2010 by noon of day three.
More importantly, however, IMTS 2012 allowed our customers to experience the world's most advanced machining technology and processes, ranging from turning to 5-axis to multi-tasking, for overcoming specific part-production challenges unique to industries such as aerospace, automotive, construction, energy and medical.
Overall, IMTS 2012 was a great opportunity for us to educate our customers on how they can blaze their own trails in today's highly competitive, continuously evolving marketplace. After all, our desire is to always have our customers tell us that they've improved their profitability as a result of investing in Mazak equipment. We want them to grow and prosper, and in the process, we want to grow as partners with them.
I'd like to personally thank everyone who came out to see us at IMTS 2012. The flocks of attendees who visited our booth proved that things are continuing to look up for the manufacturing industry, and as such we at Mazak expect to have a prosperous finish to the year and anticipate more great things to happen in 2013.