President, Yamazaki Mazak Corporation
Yamazaki Mazak India Pvt Ltd @ IMTEX 2025
The exclusive interview at IMTEX 2025 with Takashi Yamazaki, President, Yamazaki Mazak Corporation, hosted by Murali Sundaram from Magic Wand Media Inc, offered a deep dive into the company’s vision, innovations, and strategies.
Yamazaki shared insights into Mazak’s long-standing relationship with the #Indianmarket, which began in 1998, recognizing India’s potential as a hub for #manufacturingexcellence. Reflecting on the shift in demand, he highlighted the rising need for both commodity and #highendmachines in industries like #aerospace, #semiconductors, and #railways, emphasizing Mazak’s co...
About Takashi Yamazaki
Takashi Yamazaki, president of Yamazaki Mazak, discussed the company's use of Cisco industrial network switches to improve production efficiency and pursue carbon neutrality. He stated that environmental measures and factory smartification are "two wheels of business," and that collecting and storing equipment operational data via networks is the starting point for CO2 reduction, which must then be analyzed and reflected in on-site improvement activities. Yamazaki noted that the company's smart factory initiatives serve as a model for next-generation manufacturing, utilizing IT, ICT, and IoT to visualize equipment data and improve overall factory productivity. Yamazaki also described the company's adoption of Cisco's Webex for internal and external communication, including virtual product inspections for overseas customers during the COVID-19 pandemic. He emphasized that digitalization and smart factories are essential not only for productivity gains and labor efficiency but also for optimizing factory power consumption toward a carbon-neutral world. He concluded that Mazak aims to contribute to manufacturing DX through its smart factory activities.
Transcript (12 segments)
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Interviewer0:07
We welcome Takashi to India, particularly on Republic Day and also to one of the biggest Southeast Asian countries' machine tool exhibition, Intex. India has emerged as a significant market for machine tool industry. Yes, how does Mazak perceive the growth potential in the Indian market?
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Takashi Yamazaki0:40
Well actually, we have been here in India and started its operation in 1998, before this booming was coming. We thought India could be the potential market toward the future. This is what I felt already 27 years ago. So since then, we have started our solution technology centers servicing customers in terms of after-service, spare supplies, and technical support. This has been carried on for last 27 years. After so many years, we had many installations mainly from Japan and we have subsidiaries in Singapore. So both Japan-made machines and Singapore-made machines, we have a lot of installations here in India. And I felt now is the time to make a machine here in India, provide good quality machines to our Indian customers.
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Interviewer2:00
Do you see any changes in the buyers demanding for high-end machines in India? Because of late, since this market in India is growing more and more, people want high-end machinery in India, particularly in semiconductor industry, yes, aerospace industry, even to far extent, and railways since Japan and India are going to come out with a bullet train. I think this segment for high-end type of machines and commodity machines will simultaneously go; not just shifting to higher and higher.
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Takashi Yamazaki2:43
No. Many, many customers still want to have our commodity three-axis type of vertical machining center, what to access turning centers, and we must fulfill those two segments. We need a more population of Mazak machine here in India. Once they buy our commodity machines, small-scale customers like our machines' quality and performance, later they will buy our higher-end machines, higher and higher for the future. So that is one of the reasons why we start to make a machine here in India.
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Interviewer3:37
Do you think there would be a heavy demand or heavy change in the machining industry from automotive ICE engines to EV engines?
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Takashi Yamazaki3:46
No, it will, it is happening already now. For example, our 50% more than 50% of our business in China are going to automobile sectors, and out of which 50% of those automobile customers are related to EV. This is a typical example, but it doesn't happen in Japanese market, so American market, European market. You may know that it was booming a couple years ago, but now they prefer ordinary engines, combustion engines, or plus hybrid engine, hybrid.
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Interviewer4:33
Do you think that particular change will come in India whereby people will start believing again in hybrid machines and ICE engine in terms of percentage of EV?
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Takashi Yamazaki4:47
Segment will be toward the future will be somewhat 10 to 20%, this is our guess, and 80% includes traditional engine, hybrid engine, PHP. So we have recently developed EV-dedicated machine tools for making a subframe after giga castings. This is one of our answer to the market or to the customer. Hey, we are here ready to provide the machine to EV industry.
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Interviewer5:30
Let's speak about energy. Energy is one big segment for machine tool manufacturer. Yes, what do you think about the energy segment? Besides size of the machine itself, there's no specific machines required for solar segment into a windmill segment.
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Takashi Yamazaki6:00
So as I said, we supplied some of our machine to the manufacturer, the customers who make solar panel components, including our laser cutting machines. Our laser cutting machine is very suitable for making solar panel components.
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Interviewer6:21
So let's get away from the business point of view. How do you find Intex?
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Takashi Yamazaki6:30
Intex, I have been to Intex close to, I don't know, 20 years. I've been here many, many times. And each time I feel the scale of Intex is getting bigger and bigger. But the scale is just one issue; people's attention, especially our local customers in India, come more and more. I think this Intex 2025 is we will receive a largest number of customers in ever. So means we must be prepared for Intex 2027 because of number of booths we want to show not only machine but our technology. We want to show good cutting demonstrations to attract the customers. Hey, Mazak could be the next choice for their investment.