"Value" Chain Starting with Customers

The Brother Group places customers first, demonstrating its "At your side." spirit in its approach to manufacturing. To contribute to even greater value creation at production sites, the Brother Group is responding quickly to customer demands and changes in the world including with the SPEEDIO series of machine tools.

With the recent shift to electric vehicles (EVs) in the automobile market, the need for machining EV-related parts has grown significantly in the machine tool industry. The demand for machining large parts such as motor cases is increasing among customers, and machine tools are required to adapt to the diversification and complexity of parts to be machined.

The U500Xd1 universal compact machining center, launched in May 2022, was developed to meet the needs of customers who want to machine large parts on a compact machine. By incorporating a large tilting rotary table capable of multi-face machining, the U500Xd1 can machine larger parts while maintaining the same unit size as the previous model. In addition, the number of tools that can be stored has been increased from the previous model's 21 tools to a maximum of 28 tools, which accommodates the increase in the number of tools used due to the growing complexity of parts machining and reduces the time required to change tools, contributing to labor savings.

The H550Xd1, released in April 2023, is another model developed by engineers in response to customer feedback. Demand for machining large parts for EVs has been increasing, and there has been a strong demand for horizontal machining centers, which have a larger machining space than vertical machining centers. In response to this demand, the H550Xd1, the first horizontal machining center in the SPEEDIO series, enables the machining of large parts by providing a large machining space, which is difficult to achieve with a vertical machining center.

There was a demand from customers for a compact machine capable of multi-face machining of large parts, a demand that could not be met by existing horizontal machining centers. In response to this demand, the new model maintains the compact body size that is one of the strengths of the SPEEDIO series, while using a total of 30 tools and incorporating a table that can handle multi-face machining at high speed, thereby helping to solve the problem of increasing complexity of parts machining.

The Brother Group will continue to develop products by listening to customer demands in order to provide optimal products that meet their needs, while leveraging its own strengths and expertise.

Corporate commercial "The Essence of Manufacturing"

BIL has released the corporate commercial "The Essence of Manufacturing," a documentary film showing the journey of a young Brother engineer who gains hints for manufacturing through dialogue with customers.

• This video is available only in Japanese