Machine tool builder to increase production to 200 machines/month
Mazak Corp. (Mazak Canada, Cambridge, ON) is ramping up manufacturing at its North American plant in Florence, KY, with a significant expansion that will increase production capacity to 200 machines per month to meeting growing customer demand.
The expansion is slated for completion this Fall and Mazak will host a special event to celebrate.
Coinciding with the growth of its production facility, Mazak is bolstering its customer service and support offerings with expansions to its National Technology Center and Center for Multi-Tasking and Manufacturing Excellence and North American Parts Center. Combined, the three significant expansions will add over 200,000 sq ft to Mazak’s Kentucky manufacturing campus, increasing its total floor space to 800,000 sq ft and positioning it as one of the largest machine tool factories in the US.
Mazak continuously invests in its North American operations and has expanded its Kentucky campus 15 times since the plant opened in 1974, each time increasing production capacity. The 2012 expansions will allow Mazak to fulfill customers’ evolving needs for advanced machine tool technology and applications support as North American manufacturing continues to grow in the energy, aerospace, construction and agriculture equipment, automotive and medical industries. Additionally, Mazak will further increase capacity to export machines worldwide.
“The late chairman and CEO of Yamazaki Mazak Corp. Teruyuki (Terry) Yamazaki had the foresight to manufacture machine tools in the US to gain an innate understanding of its manufacturing culture and to support the industry in the best possible way,” says Brian Papke, president of Mazak Corp. “And from the day the company opened its doors in Kentucky, Mazak has continued that dedication to the support of manufacturing not only through our highly productive and advanced machine tool technology, but also through our unmatched apprenticeship and training programs to help build a stronger highly skilled workforce.”
As one stage of the manufacturing facility expansion, existing shop production offices currently housed within the plant will move to a new added area, which will create a spacious center aisle within the manufacturing building. The larger floor space will allow for the installation of new additional manufacturing equipment, including a highly advanced manufacturing cell that is unique to the industry and produced exclusively by Mazak.
The new cell will incorporate Mazak’s modular Palletech system, which allows dissimilar machine tools to be integrated into the same manufacturing cell. To produce whole families of components for Mazak’s new larger machine models, the cell will include a Kentucky-built Mazak Orbitec 20 model large part machining centre, two Mazak Horizontal Center Nexus machining centres and a full 5-axis Integrex e-1060V vertical machining centre.
Expansion of applications support
The National Technology Center is the hub for Mazak’s eight Regional Technology Centers and, as such, enhances Mazak’s customer support capabilities throughout North America. The National Technology Center, which opened in 1996 and was doubled in size as the result of a 2006 expansion, will now grow from 69,000 to 100,183 sq ft. Included will be the addition of seven new high bay areas, a second story to its office section and additional square footage for its technology demonstration area. The new office area provides for six new dedicated customer training rooms and space for the company’s National Service Department.
Increase in parts support
Mazak’s expansion of its North American Parts Center will increase that facility’s storage capacity by 25 per cent. Two new fully automated vertical lift module storage systems will boost small parts capacity by 5,600 parts, and Mazak is replacing an existing rack system with a new one that will provide 286 more pallets of large part storage. In total, the expansion will allow the Mazak Parts Center to stock over 50,000 unique part numbers–one of the industry’s largest inventories of spare parts–valued at more than $65 million and available for immediate same-day delivery for 97 percent of all orders.
