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Through this interview with Rakesh Rao of IPF, Mohini Kelkar, MD, Grind Master Group, shows how SMEs can also leverage on automation to make a global mark in the highly knowledge-intensive machine tools industry.
Surface finishing is a core process for making many products and requires a certain technological finesse. After making a humble beginning from a garage, Grind Master Machines, based in the Aurangabad (Maharashtra), has made a global impression in the surface finishing arena by offering world class technologies at cost competitive price. In conversation with Rakesh Rao, Mohini Kelkar, the co-Founder and Managing Director of Grind Master Group, narrates the journey of the company and why IoT (Internet of Things) and other cutting-edge technologies are important for small & medium enterprises (SMEs) to make a global mark.
Grind Master
Machines today is one of the leading players in surface finishing. How do you
see the journey?
The journey of 35
years has been really very exciting. Grind Master was started by me and my
husband in 1984 in the garage and today we are across the globe with
subsidiaries in France, China and USA. All through this journey, we have
developed various kinds of metal finishing and deburring machines, which were
not made in India before. To start with our machines were import substitute and
then we began selling it outside India. We got good response from our global
customers because of our innovative technologies particularly in micro
finishing and robotics.
We offer these new
technologies which are globally competitive. We typically sell our
products on the strength of innovation and technology and not really on the
basis of pricing. The key reason for us to emerge as a global player is
our determination to sell the best technology at a good price.
Germany and Japan
are known for their technological prowess in the capital and engineering goods
segments and their machines are considered to be the best in the world. We are
proud to sell our machines to Japanese and German firms.
How is your
company leveraging on automation and IoT?
With supply chains
becoming very complex, reliability at every stage is very important. Reliability
also means that there has to be a traceability and the traceability of any
fault or part come only through IoT.
Grind Master started
using IoT long time back when we started exporting to China for automobile
sector in a big way. Machines are built in such a way that any
fault-finding can be done through Cloud sitting here in our Aurangabad facility;
we don't have to send our engineers all the way to China to rectify the fault.
Secondly, we can
track the tool life using a tool management system, which is implemented on our
machines. This helps not only the customer but also allow us to monitor the
tool life and intimate customers about the condition of the tool and alert them
to take appropriate action. This has been appreciated by them.
To enhance
productivity of the plant, machines need to operate at the optimum level. IoT
enables the user to collect data from the machines, analyse them and take
actions accordingly. Grind Master has created integrated system which helps in
data analysis and directs the user to take necessary actions. For this we have
developed smart controller, which is very user-friendly.
We believe automation
is a key growth ingredient and it will become more relevant in the post COVID
scenario.
With the auto
and auto component industry in doldrums, what are your mitigation plans?
Machine tool sector
is heavily dependent on the automotive industry. We operate in multiple
countries and this offers us some cushion against regional vagaries. Though the
automotive market is down in India, globally there are markets where demand for
automotive is still there, which we are trying to capitalise. Exports has
been one of our core strengths and is helping us mitigate some of the
challenges we face in the domestic market.
We believe that
Indian automotive manufacturers will see a sudden rush in demand, once they restart.
Also, there is an anticipation that more factories would shift out of China to
other countries once situation normalises post COVID pandemic. This will
present a huge opportunity for the country, especially in the component space
as Indian automotive component industry is known globally.
As part of de-risking
strategy, we have diversified into various other sectors. For example, we have
a strong presence in home appliances space. In fact, we started our journey by
offering metal polishing solutions to the home appliances companies. We
also offer solutions to steel industry. Our specialised deburring solutions are
ideally suited for aerospace industry, which will hopefully offer big
opportunity when activities in this space start gaining momentum.
What kinds of
opportunities are you exploring in the overseas market?
COVID 19 pandemic
has put tremendous cost pressures on all the companies across the globe and
companies like Grind Master who are more flexible can offer quality technological
solutions cost-effectively. There will still be demands coming from auto OEMs
and global tier 1 component suppliers, who are looking to source products from
the country. They are looking at products on a long-term basis at a reasonable
price. This offers a good opportunity for us.
Further,
governments of countries like the US, Japan, etc have urged their companies to
explore relocation possibility from China; thus, increasing the chance of
shifting of manufacturing base to new regions like Southeast Asian countries
and India. This disruption in supply chain will lead to new business models and
setting up of new facilities to produce new parts or components for automotive
or other industries. These plants will need more flexible manufacturing solutions,
which an agile company like Grind Master can offer. We are already responding
to similar demands from our customers in Japan by offering them quality
technology at reasonable price points. By working closely with our customers
to provide the right solutions, we can expand our exports kitty further.
Amid COVID 19
crisis, what are your expectations from the government?
The government is urging
companies to pay salaries to employees. But if companies do not have any cash,
how can they pay the salaries? So, the government should support companies, particularly
SMEs, by making cash available to them for running their businesses.
Government should
also focus on ease of doing business for local enterprises to attract
investment from not just outside, but also within in the country. Changes like
labour law reforms, setting up of single window clearance mechanism, etc should
be ushered in by the government.
How are you recalibrating your
growth plans?
Till January this
year, many companies were upbeat about the growth prospect. We also had very
big plans to surpass last year’s growth numbers, though we could sense sluggishness
in automotive. Then COVID 19 struck the market triggering slowdown across all sectors
globally and putting a big question mark on the demand.
Certainly, this is
a challenging time and we are charting out a three-step recovery process. In the
first step (may be till December 2020), we will be in the survival mode, which
will be followed by a revival phase to take the company’s business to the level
of what it was last year. The growth may happen only after one and a half years.
We will steadfastly follow the three-phase recover plan as we move forward.
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INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS FINDER (IPF) is India’s only industrial product portal. Referred to as the ‘Bible’ of the manufacturing sector in India,
INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS FINDER (IPF) is India’s only industrial product portal. Referred to as the ‘Bible’ of the manufacturing sector in India,
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