Throughout 2012, we made significant investments in growing and improving our North American Headquarters Campus in Florence, Kentucky. One such investment involved expanding the size of our National Technology Center (East Building), from 69,000 to 100,183 square feet, to help make room for our Customer Service Headquarters.
We decided to merge these two core business segments inside the East Building to better meet the increased technology, training and service demands of our customers across all industry segments through improved technical and application support.
On December 18, the Customer Service Headquarters officially moved into the newly expanded East Building, occupying one third of the facility while the National Technology Center inhabits two thirds.
As such, the East Building is now home to the Customer Training Department, National Service Department, MAZATROL Control Support Group and the Documentation Department. This includes six new classrooms and a dining hall to significantly enhance the learning and training opportunities we provide customers, from advanced manufacturing seminars to machine maintenance classes to hands-on operator development courses.
On January 7, all of our Kentucky-based customer training courses started taking place in the East Building. You can view the complete list of 2013 training classes at the National Technology Center and Customer Service Headquarters here.
In addition to offering training courses at the National Technology Center and Customer Service Headquarters, customers can also visit one of our Regional Technology Centers throughout North America, where we routinely offer similar classes.
All of our Technology Centers play a key role in our comprehensive Optimum Plus service and support program. Each facility offers customers full access to advanced Multi-Tasking and 5-axis machines, parts support, applications assistance as well as leading-edge networking and manufacturing technologies.
Furthermore, our National Technology Center expansion allows for additional collaboration with the Regional Technology Centers by providing the engineering, development and necessary floor space to perform customer runoffs of larger manufacturing systems.
By constantly investing in our operations and offering such a broad range of support options, we ensure that our customers have complete access to everything they need to optimize their production processes and remain highly productive and profitable in today's challenging global economy.