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• Machining Centers Leader's Comments

Ryoichi Horiike　Assistant Division Manager & Sales Manager　MC Division

The key developments in the last few years

NTC’s strategy to expand into the stand-alone Machining Center business has evolved from our former market focus on special or exclusive purpose machines. In the past two or three years our sales of stand alone Machining Centers and units shipped has nearly doubled.

We now have achieved better ability to support the market with stock machines. The new aggressive build schedule, will improve our supply of Machining Centers to the marketplace.

Prior to September 2006 there were no significant changes to the stand-alone machine products, however the customers have begun to recognize the benefits of the product line, which has supported the increase in machine sales.

NTC has started our overseas rollout very aggressively. We have opened our new office and Technical Center in the U.S.A. in June of 2006. This new office has permitted full-scale demonstrations of NTC’s machining centers to customers related to the automobile industry in and around Detroit.

NTC recognized the potential of the market in India much sooner then most others. We have been demonstrating and placing machines in that growth market for many years.

The sales strategy in India is not focused on Japanese domestic transplant companies. We have established extremely close relationships with local enterprises.

We are beginning to harvest the flowers from the seeds we planted in Japan and many foreign countries.

What kind of concept should we propose?

Is the project a System Proposal, an Engineering Proposal or both?

We have applied our expertise to an array of different industries; these skills have been acquired from our experience in the automotive industry. Our proposed engineered solutions to different types of customers have enhanced the stability, quality, and productivity of our new customer base. These advancements into new areas of product production have been accepted as a new production method.

Our product proposals have an advantage in other high production industrial applications because we have a long proven record in the high production automotive market. The acceptance of NTC’s products and experience by other industries has given us momentum. Thus insuring our confidence that what we are building is the right product for many varied production applications.

How about the schedule for announcing new products

We will release new products in a big way!

NTC is developing new machines for the market that should just about sell themselves.

We are applying technological advancements to the new products while maintaining our traditional high reliability and performance. We have brought all of this to the market with very pleasing product designs.

We are renewing both our general-purpose machines and line application machines. We have prepared a plan for close cooperation between our sales and manufacturing people so that we can successfully launch the new products into the market.

One of our new products the Zµ3500 the ultra precise micro-machining center has received high praise from the market, awards from prestigious organizations and the competition. The Zµ3500 has been the center attraction everywhere it has been shown. Many customers have stated that they have come just to see the Zµ3500. NTC is proud of this strong impact on the market.

NTC’s engineers with the express purpose of applying the most advanced technological innovations developed the Zµ3500. These innovations are used to process parts with the highest accuracy and precision and are not available with existing technologies. As an added bonus this was accomplished with a simple overall design, which has taken reliability to an all-new level.

What about the future prospects

This is a very important time since we are beginning to increase our supply of machines.

As we develop new machines we are designing our products for the niche markets. NTC does not plan to go head to head with the large commodity machine tool builders. We will build machines for the stand-alone market but will be specific to the niche’s we are addressing unlike the other manufacturers of machine tools that attempt to be everything to everyone.

As for sales we will provide a strong network to support our agents and dealers so that we can sustain manufacturing capacity and our goals.

NTC is good at automobiles; we want the market to say NTC has also become the machining center company. I am confident we will get there.