Positive vibes

With a focus on productivity and involving the UK operations of Citizen and Miyano, a recent open house taged at Citizen Machinery's UK showroom and headquarters in Watford, drew some 150 visitors, significantly more than were expected due to market conditions.

The supporting exhibition of companies involved with tooling, barfeeds, in-process machine monitoring, probing, non-contact measurement, CAD to CAM software and finance reflected how the participants were encouraged by the quality of visitors who had a common theme of planning for the future.

Said Geoff Bryant, managing director of Citizen Machinery UK: “Discussions with both OEMs and subcontractors over the three days confirmed that industry had ‘bottomed-out' and there was an air of positive thinking for the future.”

This was supported by Citizen Machinery UK taking orders for four Citizen CNC sliding head turn/mill centres. In-depth discussions centred on how the latest developments and techniques could contribute to improved machine utilisation and productivity, especially to counter more frequent set-ups due to the trend towards even smaller batch sizes.

Many visitors were joint Citizen and Miyano customers who already recognised the synergy between the two brands of sliding head and fixed head machining technology even before the acquisition by Citizen of Miyano last year. “Customers were very complimentary over the integration of the two companies providing a single source in the UK of advanced turn/milling on components up to 64mm diameter,” added Mr Bryant. “They appreciated the intended differentiation between the two leading brands in this sector.”

www.citizenmachinery.co.uk