Citizen 40th anniversary Open House delivers 1.4 million reasons to celebrate

The sales took in CNC sliding-head and fixed-head turn-mill centres worth over £1.4 million, which, says the company, will make a significant contribution to achieving the £40 million order book target for 2014. The machines were valued between £55,000 and £300,000 each. Says managing director Geoff Bryant: "Such was the level of interest from the 176 visitors from 93 companies that our sales and applications team are now following up and facing extremely good prospects of securing a 14 further machine tool deals from initial enquiries generated during our four-day event." The celebratory event held at the Bushey, Watford, headquarters coincided with Citizen Miyano Machinery Co's announcement in Japan that the group is very close to selling its 100,000th machine before the close of the year. This milestone included machines drawn from right across the stable of Citizen, Miyano and Ocean Cincom product lines. As Bryant reflects, the consensus from visitors to the Open House (70/30% subcontractors/OEMs) was that they were running almost flat out. They were seeking additional machining capacity with the ability to reduce cost per part and improve lead time by producing as many features as possible into a cycle. Not only was this seen to improve competitiveness, but also to help increase profit margins from growing order books. "Distance seemed not to deter visitors, with several flying in from Ireland and Scotland," the managing director says, adding also that: "The partner suppliers taking part in the Citizen event covering material, tooling, coolant, software and various items of ancillary equipment that form key areas of the production scene were seen by visitors as important contributors to improving productivity on both new and existing machine tools." Also high on the interest level and seeing in-depth application team involvement was the new production concept for bar or chucking work, the award-winning Citizen MC20. This three-spindle flexible turning cell, with robotic blank part loading and 'kissing spindle' component transfer technology, was seen by many as an important nod to future flexible production methods.