PM News: Miyano Cuts Debt, Expects Improved Sales
With its new president and CEO, Hiromi Osumi, Miyano Machinery Japan Inc. (Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture) has cut its debt from 12.3 billion yen ($117 million) to 7 billion yen ($66 million).
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Miyano Cuts Debt, Expects Improved Sales
With its new president and CEO, Hiromi Osumi, Miyano Machinery Japan Inc. (Ueda City, Nagano Prefecture) has cut its debt from 12.3 billion yen ($117 million) to 7 billion yen ($66 million). The debt reduction occurred mostly because of banks’ write-offs of bad debts as well as cash infusion from the government’s Industry Revitalization Corp. of Japan in September 2004. The Company disclosed its sales estimate for the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2005. Thanks to the booming new orders in Japan and a traditional 60 percent share of the domestic fixed spindle/automatic market, the company expects sales to rise 30 percent from a year earlier to 18 billion yen ($171.4 million).
Given the situation, Miyano developed a reconstruction blueprint that would be carried forward from 2005. A major project calls for building a factory-like structure to consolidate all research and product development at Fukushima Works (Yabuki Town, Fukushima Prefecture). The R&D function is fulfilled at three works, including those at Ueda and Kitagami City, in Iwate Prefecture. The new structure will cost “several hundreds of millions of yen.”
Importer of Swiss-type lathes grows. James C. Duggins is leaving as vice president and general manager of the two branch offices of Midwest Industrial Tools, Inc. to become national sales manager for KSI Swiss (Louisville, Colorado), an importer of Swiss-type (sliding headstock) automatic lathes made in South Korea.
Mr. Duggins has been running the Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Denver, Colorado offices of Midwest Industrial Tools, Inc. (Omaha, Nebraska). For the past year, those branches have also handled the KSI Swiss line.
KSI Swiss, which made its American debut at IMTS 2004, concentrates on producing bar automatics.
Tsugami rebuilds after earthquakes destruction. Tsugami Corp. (Tokyo, Japan) has earmarked 2.5 billion yen ($23.8 million) to carry out scrap and rebuild plans as its old main works in Nagaoka, Niigata Prefecture, were affected by a series of severe earthquakes. The city is located near the several epicenters of quakes that initially hit the area on October 23, 2004.
By next fall, the lathe manufacturer intends to build factories with combined monthly capacity of 300 units, up from the current 200 units, at the same site. There, three factory buildings originally erected before World War II became inoperative because of the quakes, and production already has been relocated to a subsidiary’s site in the same city.
AMTDA welcomes eight new Certified Machine Tool Sales Engineers. The American Machine Tool Distributors’ Association (AMTDA) recently awarded eight individuals the Certified Machine Tool Sales Engineer (CMTSE) designation. The program is the only national professional certification program for machine tool sales engineers. The following are the names of the new CMTSEs: Mario Barello, Robert S. McKenzie, David L. Wherry, all with J&H Machine Tools, Inc.; Anne Collision, SMS Machine Tools Limited; Gary L. Frick, Hartwig, Inc.; Robert W. Price, SNK America, Inc.; Leonard C. Wheeler, Thomas Skinner & Son, LTD; and Steven M. Willinger, R.O. Deaderick Company.
MTA has new director general. The Manufacturing Technologies Association (MTA) appointed Andrew Manly as its new director general.
As secretary general, Mr. Manly has led the Process and Packaging Machinery Association (PPMA) for the last 17 years. He has developed and expanded the association in terms of membership and its commercial activities and has visited more than 60 countries promoting the sector, exports and United Kingdom manufacturing.
An active member of the Engineering and Machinery Alliance, he has also represented the PPMA at industry functions.
Optical Gaging Products, Inc. has shipped its 1,000th SmartScope Flash 200 to the Kennametal Inc. facility in Orwell, Ohio. The personal metrology system helps maintain Kennametal’s measurement efficiency. The company uses the optional SmartReport Plus software package, which formats data for printed reports and exports to spreadsheets and databases.
