The total display area hit a record 70,462 square meters. The sponsors provided a special booth for international information, serving as a place for people from international machine tool companies to meet together and exchange views and ideas. The sponsors also arranged a meeting between the people from international machine tool companies and those from International Information Center's member companies.

No. 5 Hall was expanded to have a floor area of 12,500 square meters, making the total display area a record 75,000 square meters, accommodating 5,445 display stands (the largest of all Japanese trade fairs). Main events included an opening ceremony, a night tour for people from international participating companies, and the International Machine Tool Engineers' Conference.

The site for the JIMTOF was moved from the Harumi site to Tokyo Big Sight, which is the largest exhibition area in Japan. The JIMTOF was co-sponsored by Tokyo International Trade Fair Commission and Japan Machine Tool Builders' Association for the first time. A new system for counting and controlling visitors was introduced to control the flow of visitors more smoothly and process visitor data by computer. This system required pre-registration of visitors.

Matrix code was adopted for the first time, and also first theme was set. (The theme was "The Mono-Zukuri Renaissance – The drawing of a new manufacturing era - ")

21st JIMTOF was first running Tokyo holding, and implemented displays classified by categories of exhibits. 60 companies were recognized for their 20 times successful participation in JIMTOF.

Events such as the demonstrations by prize winners of the Skills Competitions were well received by visitors. The biggest JIMTOF since it moved to Tokyo Big Sight gathered 5,037 booths, and the number of visitors turned out to be over 140,000.