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Twenty-two participants in Swissmem’s 2016 Young Professional Program (YPP) are part of an important professional intercultural change highlighted by a visit to the 2016 Japan International Machine Tool Fair (JIMTOF) in Tokyo, Japan—an experience made possible in part by Tornos.

Tornos is an official 2016 Program Supporter of YPP. This underscores Tornos’ commitment to developing the brightest professionals to secure a prospering future for the machine tool industry. YPP participants are young people in their final year of apprenticeship, their studies of a Bachelor of Science degree in universities of applied science, or studies of a Master of Science degree at select Swiss federal universities.

The 14-day YPP trip to Japan coincided with JIMTOF, November 17–22, but started before and extends beyond Japan’s most important machine tool exhibition in order to include additional cultural and technical visits. YPP fosters the intercultural exchange of Switzerland’s and Japan’s young, well educated professionals in mechanical engineering. It helps make mechanical engineering—especially studies and professions related to machine tools and their processes—more appealing and interesting. Moreover, YPP encourages a holistic approach to understanding other cultures and aims to trigger interest in participants learning Japanese.

Along with visiting JIMTOF as an official delegation, YPP participants toured the Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology where Japanese culture meets technology, in Nagoya, and the Edo-Tokyo Museum; visited Okuma, Mazak and FANUC to get a feel for the machine tools of the future and gain inside information for individual YPP tasks and reporting; and saw Mount Fuji, an active volcano and Japan’s tallest peak.

The technical portions of the visit to Japan gave YPP participants a first-hand glimpse at Japanese factories, leading edge automation, research and development and complex applications, as well as insights on Japanese research at Keio University with a focus on improved monitoring strategies, tool wear and on production flexibility with hybrid machine tools.

Swissmem is the Swiss association of mechanical and electrical engineering (MEM) industries. Its YPP 2016 program is also supported by Program Partners. For more information about YPP, visit Swissmem’s Facebook and Twitter accounts, or the Swissmem website at http://www.swissmem.ch