June 23, 2001
National Machinery's Asia business booming
By Carol Bogart
Staff Writer
National Machinery's Japanese-speaking translators were busy this week during the company's once-yearly training seminar for Japanese-speaking customers.
Thirty-eight suppliers to 35 Japanese companies like Toyota, Nissan, other auto manufacturers as well as other industries took advantage of the week-long program.
National's manager of its Asia division, Karl Kortlandt, says the tooling seminar taught the visitors how to design tooling used in cold-forming machines to produce parts to net-shape parts. He explains, "A net-shape parts means there is not a need for machining to get to the final shape."
While that may still sound like a foreign language to those outside the manufacturing industry, English is very much a foreign language to those attending the seminar.
Kortlandt says, "For many of these fellows, it's their first trip to the United States." The suppliers stayed at the new Holiday Inn Express and, Kortlandt says, "frequented many of our local restaurants."
Such a seminar is a plus for Tiffin's economy and the Japanese customers are proving to be a big plus for National.
"Because of the current U.S. economy," Kortlandt says, "business for National has reduced here in the United States. However, sales in Asia for National doubled from 1990 to year 2000.
"This year, our sales currently indicate that we may again double the sales this year."
National offers four seminars for English-speaking customers annually in addition to the one per year for the Japanese. The company's increasingly global presence has also prompted the company to offer training for customers whose primary language is French, German, Spanish or Italian.
During such training, translators on staff at National simultaneously translate English instruction into the language best understood by the trainee.
Overseas orders are helping keep the company afloat during what National's president, Paul Aley, acknowledges are very tough domestic economic times.