The eighth annual Joint Open House (J.O.H.) for local machine tool dealers was held over two days on April 24th and 25th in the Greater Toronto Area.
Five locations across Mississauga and Oakville opened their doors to both shop owners and production staff to show off products and speak with attendees about manufacturing solutions.
The participating locations included DMG Canada, EMEC Machine Tools, Single Source Technologies (SST), and Ferro Technique, all based out of Mississauga, as well as Elliott Matsuura Canada, located in Oakville.
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“I think it’s a fantastic opportunity to bring out the people and showcase the new technologies,” said Daniel Medrea, Managing Director at DMG Canada.
“By doing it with the other four partners it’s worthwhile for everyone. We’ve never had so many machines before, four milling machines and four lathes,” he continued.
The event was well attended, and much of the discussion centered around the optimism towards the manufacturing sector in the lead up to the Canadian Manufacturing Technology Show (CMTS) this fall.
“We’ll be at CMTS… It should be a good fourth quarter. I think up to this point (sales) have been spotty. A lot of activity, just hard for customers to release orders… but the third and fourth should be good,” said Brian Donnelly, Vice President at Ferro Technique.
“Normally after a down period it goes up, and it goes up quickly.”
Tajal Mehta, the Vice President of Operations at EMEC echoed that sentiment.
“Canada is on the right track. We’re seeing some (improvement) right now in productivity. The buying cycle’s a little slower than I’d like it to be, however I think 2013 will be a very strong year automotive-wise,” he said.
A number of exhibitors also discussed their interest in the manufacturing strength of western Canada and had high hopes for the Western Manufacturing Technology Show (WTMS) this June in Edmonton.
“I’m finding that 50, maybe 60 per cent of my business is coming from western Canada on the fab side,” said Nigel King, Product Manager for Elliott Matsuura.
“We’re going to have a press brake (at CMTS), and we’re also going to have a press brake at the Edmonton show,” he continued.
“One thing I find about western Canada, they’re a lot more positive. You drive down the street and you see signs that say ‘welders wanted’, ‘machinists wanted’.”
But others commented on the strength of the more traditional Canadian markets as well.
“In Montreal and Quebec there’s a lot of aerospace, so titanium, hard metals, things like that we’re working on,” said Peter Sheridan, Application Engineering Technologist, at SST; the distributor for Makino machine tools.
“We had a record year in January for machine sales for aerospace machine sales. We sold quite a number of them in the Montreal market.”
A number of suppliers were also in attendance at each of the locations to meet potential customers and showcase everything from cutting tools to metrology equipment. Suppliers included Sandvik Coromant, Renishaw and Data Flute, among many others.
At each location drinks and lunch were also served over the course of the open house, and prizes, including a trip to Las Vegas, were available to attendees that visited all the locations.
