All smiles at Tokyo M-T show, but is this boom different?

Given three straight years of high-flying orders, the atmosphere was festive at the twenty-third biennial Japan International Machine Tool Fair (JIMToF). The event literally began with fanfare, with a personal robot made by Toyota Motor playing a trumpet solo.

Even the weather helped, as Indian summer prevailed in the Japanese archipelago early this month, following an intolerably humid summer. So a record 130,908 outside visitors--excluding 23,174 people from the participating companies' staffs--turned up at the two pavilions run at the Tokyo Big Sight venue, itself a co-sponsor (and which organization reported a near-record high income in its most recent year). (Earlier in its history, the show had alternated between Tokyo and Osaka, but after the Tokyo Big Sight exposition center was completed for the 2000 event, the JIMToF has stayed in the capital.)

The other co-sponsor, the Japan Machine Tool Builders' Assn. (Tokyo) made sure to enliven the fair by offering not just the usual lectures, workshops, and the like but also metal-turning demonstration performances by veteran engineers. A general-purpose lathe, courtesy of Tecno Wasino Co. (Komaki, Aichi Pref.), was operated daily by turning-contest winners from Toyota and Hitachi Ltd. (Tokyo). The latter, once the top shareholder of now defunct Hitachi Seiki Co. (Abiko, Chiba Pref.), is Japan's top manufacturer of heavy and consumer electrical equipment.

The JMTBA also tried to raise college-students' interest in machine tools to help builders hire competent brains. A total of 142 undergraduates and graduate students from 11 schools were invited to two-day tours to the event. The trade group also invited four universities to show off their students' compact formula racing cars, led by a red-painted speedster from Sophia Univ. (Tokyo), the winner in a September collegiate race. However, there was no course for test driving by visitors.

Inside the halls, a record 546 exhibiting companies were led by 74 firms that are JMTBA members that primarily build metal-cutting machines. Some 41 pressbuilder members of the Japan Forming Machinery Assn. (Tokyo) displayed at JIMToF, but their total exhibit space was eclipsed by booths taken by 38 members of the Japan Machine Tool Importers' Assn. (Tokyo).

Versatile five-axis and multitasking machine tools seemed to attract most attention, particularly, JMTBA noted, that of students. The machine-tool builders also are trying to cope with--or cash in on--another notable trend in Japan: streamlining and consolidating production steps at the machine users' factory floors. The trade association went on to say that this fact is observed at Big Sight even more clearly than at the 2005 EMO (Hanover, Germany) and September's IMTS (Chicago, Ill.). The JMTBA also noted that its member builders are trying to respond to the customers' wish to see "advantageous investment effects" (read "value for the money") while further raising the product quality and reliability.