Thread: Dmg/mori seiki Davis , CA

New plant up and running? Anyone have anything good or bad or interesting they could share about this particular plant. New jobs, new opportunity, are the guys getting it going over from Japan ? How's that work, would there be a language barrier at first? Is the automation on scale with Haas? Please share any first hand knowledge on this subject, if you would be so kind!

Hi James,

Had to chuckle when I saw your question. We were at the Haas factory a few weeks ago. Then spent a good portion of this past Friday up at Davis at the Digital Technology Lab for some demos and getting a slide presentation on the new factory. Will tell you what I remember. The factory is still having equipment installed and proven out. They have scheduled an open house for the public on Nov. 8-9. The staff will number about 150 when totally operational. An undisclosed number have already been hired and are undergoing about 6 months of training on machine assembly and testing which is currently carried out in the DTL building. The factory will only build one model of machine initially - NVX4000 Horizontal I believe.

The factory is divided into two main areas - machining and production. The machining area is highly automated; only human involvement is loading material onto pallets. From there large robots/machine vision systems take over. There is no coolant used in the factory; all machining is done on cast iron. All other machining is done by outside sources. Machine content is 35%Japan, 45%USA, 20%other. There are a max of 3 production lines - 2 will operate initially. Assembly of a machine takes 2 weeks start to finish - this is where most of the staffing is needed.

Some factory specs: floor area is 200,000 sqft total, floor is 1 meter thick, inside temperature is controlled to 23deg C +/- 1 deg. 2megawatt solar install on the roof to offset some of the energy requirements. As with most of the Haas plant, all machining is carried out on large Mori Seiki equipment. Most of the robots seem to be Toshiba.

As you might expect, this new factory is probably a bit more sophisticated than the Haas plant, but they share a lot of common characteristics - they are not dramatically different other than the size of the operation. If you are interested in the employment aspect, a search under Mori Seiki Davis CA jobs will turn up a location where on can contact them. I could go on and on about details of the operation, but have to get going and make some parts.

Fred

Edit: Just realized the comment about Haas was meant to indicate that they use Haas machines to make Haas equipment - oops.

We drove thru Davis on Sunday and the buildings are close to Hwy 80- 1st time I've seen any signs on the buildings.

Dan