Dies & moulds are the heart of the manufacturing industry

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Dies & moulds are the heart of the manufacturing industry

Dies & moulds are the heart of the manufacturing industry

Interviews
Jan 29,24

In this interview with Rakesh Rao, Vivek Nanivadekar, Executive Director, FIBRO India Precision Products Pvt Ltd, elaborates on the importance of moulds and dies for the manufacturing sector and the company’s future growth plans

Dies & moulds are the heart of the manufacturing industry

FIBRO India is the 100 per cent subsidiary of the Germany-based FIBRO GmbH, a global market leader offering standard parts for die & mould making industries and rotary tables for metal cutting & automation systems. The company, which has completed 15 years of operations in India, has been consistently growing with CAGR of 27 per cent. In this interview with Rakesh Rao, Vivek Nanivadekar, Executive Director, FIBRO India Precision Products Pvt Ltd, elaborates on the importance of moulds and dies for the manufacturing sector and the company’s future growth plans.

As a supplier of standard parts for dies & moulds, how is FIBRO supporting the growth of user-industries? Would you like to highlight some of your new offerings?

FIBRO India has completed 15 years of its operation in India. We started with manufacturing guide pillars. Based on the customer feedback, we kept adding new products in our offering like guideposts, wear plates, spring plunger etc. As the die & mould industry started growing in India in 2017, we realised that the CAM units were imported as nobody was manufacturing in India being a hi-tech product. But the demand for the CAM units was increasing. Hence, we started developing simple CAM units and offered to our customers. Today, we have large range from simple to high precision CAM units up to 300 mm width and supplying to domestic as well as international markets. As of now, we have supplied more than 5,000 CAM units worldwide.

We work very closely with our customers to understand their pain areas and help them with most appropriate solution. Similarly, until few years back, nobody was doing the interconnection of gas springs. But we have the knowhow so we started offering the services of interconnection of gas springs to our customers. Initially, they were little hesitant but as of today many of them are doing the interconnection of gas springs in their dies on their own after learning from our engineer. The interconnection of gas springs reduces the internal space ensuring the consistent performance.

Recently, we introduced WPM (Wireless Pressure Monitoring) system for gas springs which ensures the consistent performance of the die.

Why moulds and dies are considered crucial for the success of the manufacturing sector?

The die & mould industry is the heart of the manufacturing sector. Automobiles, white goods, defence equipment, etc consist of a lot of interchangeable plastic as well metal components of various shapes and contours, and they are required in large quantities. These components, which are of high precision and consistent surface finish, are produced from dies & moulds. The designing and manufacturing of dies & moulds is highly specialised field requiring high skills and knowhow. For the safety of the passengers, the use of hot forming components in vehicle is increasing. Indian tooling industry is in a phase of acquiring these skills and technique.

What are key challenges before the dies & moulds industry today? How is Fibro helping them overcome some of these challenges?

As mentioned above hot forming tools and processes are one of the challenges for the Indian die & mould industry. The manufacturing dies for skin panels is another challenge as more than 65 per cent of skin panels dies are getting imported. The most important criterion for OEMs is the lead time of Indian tool makers, which is considerably longer compared to makers from other countries like China/Taiwan. Some of the reasons for a long lead time are:

Long lead time for die blocks
Currently, most of the tool rooms are booked for next 12 months
The lack of knowledge of latest technology/ practises being used in developed countries
The lack of collaborative approach among the tool makers

The lack of standardisation. This is the area where FIBRO India is playing vital role in supplying standard parts such as guiding elements, compression springs, nitrogen gas springs, spring plungers, CAM units, etc in the shortest time so that the tool maker does not spend his valuable time in making standard parts. FIBRO India is the first and only manufacturer of CAM units in India. As per the customer requirement, we keep adding new CAM units in our product range such as high force compact CAM units for forming high tensile components.

Which end-user industries are driving the demand for tools? Will the growing electric vehicles industry and rising use of additive technology (3D printing) affect the demand for tooling?

To the best of my knowledge, automotive, electronics, white goods and railways to certain extent drive the demand for tools. There will be more demand for semi-automation and 3D printing in defence and renewable energy sectors due to the low/medium volume of components requirement.

The electric vehicles (EVs) will not reduce the tooling requirement; rather the batteries will increase the need of tooling. As the development cycle for EV is smaller than internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles, more number of new EV models will be introduced with additional features, which would increase the tooling demand. Secondly, the world has started realising that the India is poised to become the global manufacturing base so the demand for tooling is bound to grow.

The 3D printing technology is still evolving and, hence, it will be too early to make any comments. But certainly, this technology is especially useful for making the prototypes and small batch components.

What are key trends to watch out for in the dies & moulds industry in the coming years?

The first thing is to catch up with the international trends, such as hot forming technology. This process is quite new to India and so is the tooling for that process. As the safety norms for all the equipment are becoming increasingly stringent, the processes of manufacturing are becoming more complex and hot forming is one of them. The end customer needs equipment (whether automobile or white good) which are light in weight, consumes less energy, and adhere to high safety norms. From the point of environment protection, all materials should be non-polluting and recyclable. So, the processes, especially for non-metals such as plastic, are changing drastically.

What are your growth plans for Fibro India in the next 2-3 years? What kinds of new opportunities are you looking to tap?

FIBRO has completed 15 years of operations in India. FIBRO India has been consistently growing with CAGR of 27 per cent. This has been possible due to increasing the product range to suit the market needs not only in India but globally. There is significant difference between European tools and Asian tools. As such, at FIBRO India we are manufacturing standard parts for both the markets. We started manufacturing long back such as C.I. wear plates, Guideposts, CAM units, etc required by Asian tool makers. We have recently started manufacturing punches and ejectors for the world market. We will increase the capacity as the market demand grows. We also have plans to increase the range of standard parts for plastic injection moulds in addition to standard parts for sheet metal forming tools.

Besides, we plan to increase the range of CAM units so that the Indian customers do not depend on imports. As the world is looking at India as futuristic global manufacturing hub, we have committed to gear up manufacturing to offer all the products ex-stock to our customers.

At present, we are tapping defence, aerospace and railways sectors to find out how we can serve these sectors.