mwp awards 2008 sponsor
CATEGORY: BEST SOFTWARE
Since 2005, Mori Seiki has been working on its Mori-568 PLAN. This aims to gain the
ten leading companies in each industry sector as major customers of Mori Seiki, as well
as becoming the world leader in the machine tool industry.
Productivity with
responsibility
Mori Seiki is introducing
new equipment for
manufacturing major
components such as
ballscrews
ACCORDING to the company’s President,
Dr Masahiko Mori, the Mori-568 plan commits the
company to three business targets: ‘Mori-5: attain a 5%
share of the world market; Mori-6: achieve a
consolidated cost of sales ratio of 60%; Mori-8: establish
a system that produces a minimum of 800 machines
per month.’ He continues: ‘FY 2005, the first year of the
Mori-568 PLAN, progressed satisfactorily, partly
because of the favourable order environment and the
advantage of the weak yen. These advantages continued
in FY 2006, and we came close to achieving our targets
for the three years in only two.’
To achieve these levels of growth, Mori Seiki has
been investing in its infrastructure. With its head office
in Nagoya, Mori Seiki has three production plants, the
number 1 and 2 Nara campus, the Iga campus and the
Chiba campus. An important factor for successful mass
production of its machine tools is Mori Seiki’s plan to
introduce new equipment for the manufacture of
major components, such as spindles and ball screws inhouse.
Hiroshi Mizuguchi, Vice President and Iga
Campus Chief, says: ‘We installed a spindle grinding
line with two grinding machines connected to a gantry
loader, ball screw grinding machines, ball nut grinding
94 MWP april 2008
machines, and high precision curvic coupling grinding
machines.’
The introduction of Mori Seiki’s own heat treatment
plant has also significantly reduced lead times,
carburising and quenching has gone down from nine to
three days, ion nitriding from seven to three days, and
high frequency induction hardening from four and a
half days to one. Hiroshi Mizuguchi adds: ‘During 2006
we increased our capacity so that we could complete
100% of these processes on items such as curvic
couplings, spindles, and gears ourselves.’
Multi axis machines and the highly successful NT
range are manufactured at the Chiba campus. The NT
in particular is pivotal to the success of the Mori-568
PLAN. Hiroshi Mizuguchi says: ‘We were not able to
secure sufficient machining and assembly capacity
with the existing plant and equipment to meet the large
number of orders, so it became an urgent requirement
to expand the factory.’ Mori Seiki invested 4 billion yen
in land and buildings to construct the new Chiba No.2
Plant, which has a total area of 17,000 m 2 and a floor
space of 7000 m 2. During the construction, the
company considered environmental impact as one part
of its ongoing environmental policy, replanting twice
as many trees as it had to remove to make way for the
new buildings. The existing building, Chiba No.1 Plant,
has now become a specialist assembly factory, while the
Chiba No.2 Plant is dedicated to machining, increasing
capacity to 100 units per month.
Mori Seiki has also taken control of its sheet metal
production. In 2006, it opened a dedicated facility at its
Iga campus for manufacturing and coating the sheet
metal used in the machine cabinets and electrical
enclosures, reducing machining times for these parts
from one week to three days. The target is to produce
35% of machine bodies and 50% of electrical cabinets
To view a Ceros magazine you need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser and have the flash player 8 or higher installed. To install the latest flash player, click the icon above, install the flash plugin and then click here to refresh this page.