00-00-0000 Although the companies in this year's top 15 are fairly familiar.

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Although the companies in this year's top 15 are fairly familiar, the
order in which they appear might be a surprise.

The machine-tool scorecard ranking the 1997 performance of the world'
top machine-tool companies is disclosed and the big surprise is who is
not first: Thyssen Production plans Although Thyssen is clearly
the largest farmer now, it didn't rate that position upon the 1997
list because it didn't include Giddings & Lewis.

The acquisition, agreed to often earlier, actually took place in succession the
last day of the Thyssen's '97 fiscal year, which meant that it

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