EMO HANOVER – 14-21 SEPTEMBER 2005
GLOBAL STRATEGY
Ambition as big as the planet
Andrew Allcock looks at the strategy that will help Japanese machine tool builder Mori Seiki to achieve
its declared intention to increase its global market by almost 50 per cent
I
f you’re going to have a plan, make it a
grand plan. Well, Japanese machine
tool builder Mori Seiki has such a one.
The company, which manufactures CNC
lathes, machining centres and grinding
machines, aims to become the world’s
largest metalcutting machine tool
builder by March 2008. And it will do this
by growing its orders to
represent 5 per cent of
global orders for
CNC lathes, plus
vertical and
horizontal
machining
centres.
That’s the
headline
statement from
the company’s
‘Global One’
strategy, the Mori568PLAN.
Mori Seiki is not currently the world’s
largest machine tool maker; that honour,
by general consensus, goes to Japan’s
Yamazaki – for metalcutting machines;
while the world’s largest machine tool
maker overall is reckoned to be Japan’s
Amada, which does not make lathes,
machining centres or grinding machines.
As for global market share, Mori Seiki’s
current slice of the action for the
specified machine types is a claimed 3.4
per cent. So growth of almost 50 per
cent is required at the global level
to achieve the 5 per cent figure.
But progress, according to
JMTBA order figures, for the stated
machine types is clearly
demonstrable (JMTBA figures,
incidentally, do not include the
metalforming machine tool builder’s
figures). Last year, JMTBA global orders
for lathes and vertical and horizontal
machining centres stood at
¥120 billion (¥108=$1). It
is this JMTBA slice that
the company says is “Mori Seiki’s
opportunity”.
Mori Seiki’s percentage of those
orders was something over 9 per cent in
2004. In 2001 this percentage was under
9 per cent. On the domestic front, in
2001, its domestic share of JMTBA orders
was around 6 per cent; by last year it had
climbed to over 9 per cent of the
¥70 billion market for the specified
machine types. So Mori Seiki has a track
record of increasing market share in the
recent past.
Looking to the future, JMTBA global
orders for those machines in 2008 are
estimated to grow from last year’s
¥120 billion to a total of ¥175 billion. In
particular, the “huge European market”
and “the growing Asian market” are
cited. Europe represented about
$15 billion of the world’s machine tool
market in 2004, while Asia overtook
Europe to claim more than $16 billion, in
fact (includes all machine tool types).
These two markets are the two largest
segments of world consumption versus
the US at around $7 billion and Japan at
$6 billion, according to published
figures.
TO THE POWER OF 5
So, all of this is encapsulated in the
number ‘5’ of the 568PLAN –5 per cent
global market share. A somewhat less
headline-grabbing figure is the ‘6’: here
the company aims to reduce its cost of
sales from the current level of 66 per
cent to 60 per cent. This, of course,
means an increase in profitability on its
increased market share – something that
all machine tool makers would like to
see, regardless of market share
Dr Masahiko Mori – driving strategy from the top
12
August 2005 ● www.machinery.co.uk
EMO HANOVER – 14-21 SEPTEMBER 2005
Award winner twice over
ambitions,
no doubt.
And if you
are going to increase
market share, then
increasing production
is going to be part of
that, which is where the final figure, ‘8’,
comes from – the company intends to
raise its production from the current 600
to a minimum 800 units per month.
So how? Well, the company is to
strengthen its sales force in both Europe
and Asia. Mori Seiki has already
strengthened its presence in the UK
through a new demonstration facility
(Machinery, March, page 7), while Mori
Seiki sales agent Fredk Pollard has
recently opened a northern sales office
(Machinery, June, page 6). In addition,
expansion of service is another factor,
while its sales force is to be organised to
give an industry/customer focus. Indeed,
part of its overall strategy is to target the
top 10 customers in industry.
To improve its profitability – ‘6’ – the
strategy here is for a gradual reduction in
cost of material with an expansion of inhouse manufacturing – casting test
plant, heat treatment plant are specific
investments mentioned. And it is
interesting to note that Mori Seiki
appears to be swimming against the tide
by increasing ‘insourcing’ when the
global trend is to outsource.
In addition to investment, there will
Mori Seiki has won awards for its Driven at the Centre of Gravity (DCG –
pictured, left) technology and for the built-in turret motor design of its latest
NL series lathes.
For DCG (Machinery, 19 March 2004, page 10) it was recognised
with a 24th Technology Award from the Japan Society for Precision
Engineering in September last year. DCG sees structures effectively
driven at their at centre of gravity through the use of two ballscrews
operating equi-distant from the centre of gravity. This suppresses
vibration and brings a variety of benefits, such as shorter machining time,
better roundness, improved machined surface and prolonging tool life.
Mori Seiki has adopted this principle in its NV4000 DCG, NH4000 DCG, and
NH6300 DCG machines.
For its NL series lathe (Machinery 4 June, 2004, page 16), the company
picked up the 2004 Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers Medal for New
Technology. In lathes featuring driven tools in the turret, the milling mechanism on
conventional lathes generates a great deal of heat and vibration due to the large
number of parts involved, including the motor and gear belt. A built-in
construction incorporating the motor inside the turret is the NL’s novel feature – a
world first. This revolutionary design minimises heat generation and vibration
while also eliminating transmission losses. The new design increases both
machining accuracy and cutting performance. Indeed, the NL turret can support
face milling of 80 mm diameter to deliver milling power virtually indistinguishable
from that of No 40 taper machining centre.
be a rationalisation of new machine
models and of peripheral equipment.
Finally, there is to be improved
productivity.
ADVANTAGE, MORI SEIKI
But the company has obviously got to
differentiate its products and deliver
customer advantage over and above its
competitors as it seeks to up its share of
the JMTB cake. And with a total of 450
engineers involved in R&D, it is clearly
serious about this, too.
Already the company has come up
with two award-winning technologies in
the last two years – DCG Technology
(Driven at the Centre of Gravity) and the
NL lathe with its in-built driven tool
motor (see box items).
Last September the company
concluded a deal with ballscrew maker
NSK which allows Mori Seiki to
manufacture the patented ‘NSK Highspeed low-noise ballscrew’ – Mori Seiki
already manufactures ballscrews inhouse. This ballscrew design reduces
noise by 6 dB or more in comparison
with conventional NSK products;
supports rapid traverse speeds up to 1.6
times higher than conventional designs
(making it the fastest in the world); and
the nut outside diameter is 30 per cent
small than conventional NSK nuts.
The payback for getting product
design right is high. Its NV4000 vertical
machining centre, which features DCG
technology, is in such high demand
globally that even if the company raised
the price by 20 per cent, it still reckons it
would be able sell them.
Inclusion of further novel,
differentiating technologies is part of the
plan. Drawing on the automotive
industry and its use of technology in cars,
www.machinery.co.uk ● August 2005
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EMO HANOVER – 14-21 SEPTEMBER 2005
and customers via the Mori Seiki MAPPS
CNC interface is another future
possibility.
DCG and NL in the UK
First to use DCG technology in the UK were Olympus Engineering and Marquin
Engineering, while Acorn was among the first NL users.
Olympus Engineering, Stoke on Trent, is using an NH4000DCG horizontal
machining centre. The company was on the look out for the most up-to-date
solution for cutting aluminium and more arduous materials. “The DCG technology
attracted us, along with the quality and rigidity of the Mori Seiki. We made a
conscious decision to wait for the machine to become available,” says Neil
Blood, managing director.
Wolverhampton-based sub-contractor Marquin Engineering specialises in
military communications equipment and vehicle suspension systems. It saw DCG
technology as the next step in its aim to offer state-of-the-art capabilities to its
customers. “The b axis on the NH4000DCG horizontal machining centre is
incredibly quick and it has performed exactly how we expected. We were looking
for a machine tool partner and Pollard impressed us with its back-up and
service,” says George Spencer, joint managing director.
Sub-contractor Acorn specialises in the motorsport industry, supplying
engine parts to companies in F1, World Rally Cars and Moto GP. Additionally, it
produces components for motorboats and parts for educational and research
establishments. Quantities vary from one-off prototypes to small batches of 30off. Turning accounts for more than 50 per cent of its work, with parts typically
within the 2 inch range having tolerances of around 10 microns.
The company started six years ago with a second-hand Japanese lathe
having no c-axis or milling capability. It recently installed a Mori Seiki NL series
machine with c axis and driven tooling. Some 30 per cent of the parts benefit from
the c axis and milling, freeing the machining centre for pure milling jobs and
eliminating resetting, allowing many parts to be cut and finished in one hit.
The company can use existing programs on the NL1500 with the
minimum of editing and has been able to double the spindle speeds, while
also taking larger cuts: cycle times are some 20 per cent faster.
The rigidity of the machine has seen tolerances and surface finish
greatly improved, while tool life has also been lengthened, this attributed
to the machine’s rigidity and high-pressure coolant at the cutting tip.
Acorn also finds it easier to achieve clean chipping of the swarf –
evacuating the swarf effectively avoids unnecessary delays for swarf
clearance and has a positive impact on product quality.
similar technologies may prove useful in
the machine tool industry, says the
company. For example, collision
detection using cameras and lasers, plus
Toyota’s G-BOOK system, an onboard
telematics system that links, in the car’s
case, entertainment, communication
and driver help modules, and which
could be used to support remote
machine monitoring and diagnostics, for
example.
And since mobile phones are
changing to Internet Protocol (IP)
THE BIG PICTURE
There are number of other themes such
as improving its high-speed machines to
make them better able to support the
mould tool needs of the growing medical
market. Japan is probably in the best
place for that, Mori Seiki highlights, as it
will have the world’s first ‘ageing’
population, as the number of people in
work against those in retirement falls.
Indeed, what the Mori Seiki strategy
clearly acknowledges is that there are
various technological, economic,
political and environmental drivers to
which it must respond/exploit.
One on the list for Japan is
preparation for big earthquakes –
without any preparation, this could
indeed provide a hiccup in its minimum
800 machines/month ambition.■
■
See Mori Seiki at EMO: Hall 27, Stand B46
Enter 30 at
www.machinery.co.uk/enquiry
phones, and wireless LAN
networks are expanding, the
company suggests it must
apply networking to machine
tools. As part of this, the
company says that
teleconferences
between service centres
Prize-winning DCG
technology is one of the
ways in which Mori Seiki aims to
achieve its global ambition
August 2005 ● www.machinery.co.uk
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