Until now, the orders of the Machine Tools for the fiscal year 2017 have hit the 2007’s record and are expected to finish at around 1.75 trillion yen. The report from JMBTA disclosed that the order volume to February 2018 was worth more than the previous fiscal year’s by 300,000 million yen and were expected to complete at as high as 1,742,700 million yen in March. However, it expected that the sales volume would remain unchanged from the fiscal year 2007’s due to the lack of parts and labors of manufacturers which might cause the delivery not to catch up with the upcoming orders.  

JMBTA had announced the record high of the order volume of the fiscal year 2017 on March 10 when the confirmed orders to February were at 1,597,400 million yen. In addition, if the orders in March could be completed at the average of 145,200 million yen, the total orders of the fiscal year 2017 would have been completed at 1,742,700 million yen as expected. 

Moreover, there was a factor of the strong stability of the foreign exchange rate and the stock market at the beginning of the year which had led to the expectation that the order volumes of DMG Mori Seiki would have hit the monthly record high in March. With the inclusion of the factor occurred at the end of the quarter, it was expected that the volume would have been completed within the range of 1.7 trillion yen while the fiscal year 2007’s previous record was at 1,593,900 million yen. 

On the other hand, the sales volume till February of the fiscal year 2017 was at 1,373,600 million yen. Despite its completed average sales volume of 1,498,500 million yen in March, the sales volume could not defeat the existing record high of 2007 which was at 1,543,400 million yen due to the delay of the delivery, especially the delivery of important parts such as Linear Motion Guide, of which Mr. Yukio Iimura, Chairman of JMBTA mentioned that it had caused the cancellation of the large amount of orders in April to September.   

In addition, the received orders might be affected by situations occurred within the first quarter of this year which were the volatility of the foreign exchange rate and the stock market, as well as, the US trade sanctions which had caused the difficulties to the future forecast.  

However, related parties within the industry had opined that Toyota might renew its 10 production lines at the beginning of 2020 in order to serve the concept of TNGA (Toyota New Global Architecture). Meanwhile, the manufacturers of the Machine Tools expected there would be more investment in  the automobile and aerospace industries in the US which led to JMBTA’s expectation of the fiscal year 2018’s sales volume to surge above 1.7 trillion yen of 2017.