With global manufacturing industry witnessing tectonic shift towards India, companies (MNCs as well domestic) are looking to scale up their production in the country. EMAG, which provides end-to-end manufacturing solutions to various industries including automation, can be a dependable partner for these companies – especially who are looking for manufacturing precision metal parts (in large volumes with minimal human intervention). In this interview with Rakesh Rao, Gururaj Patil, Managing Director, EMAG India Pvt Ltd, elaborates more the emerging trends in the manufacturing sector and the company’s plans to sustain growth in the coming years.

How is EMAG helping the developments in the manufacturing sector?
EMAG is a technology company engaged in providing end to end manufacturing solutions to various industries including automation. If a customer would like to manufacture precision metal parts, in large volumes consistently, with minimal human intervention, EMAG is an answer. Today, in India, we serve varied customers right from OEMs to Tier 1 and Tier 2 component manufacturers. Many of these customers export and their volumes are going up alongside the investment in EMAG machines. This is due to the fact that, once an export customer gets consistent quality and in committed volumes, the ‘word of mouth’ spreads like wild fire. In fact, our customers provide a very strong brand visibility for EMAG.

We have two manufacturing facilities, one in Zerbst, Germany and the other in Jintan, China.
We cover almost the entire chain of manufacturing from soft machining to gear teeth grinding. Automotive business contributes to a major share of our overall revenue globally. However, we have made foray into off road vehicles, agriculture and medical & aviation segments as well.

How do you see your performance FY22 and Q1 FY23? What factors have contributed to this growth?
Despite supply chain disruptions and unpredictable global demand, EMAG India will grow +20% YOY in 2022. This is because of the increasing need of the manufacturing community to combine operations, reduce human interventions and increased thirst for high quality, bulk production. Besides, customers need a ‘reliable’ equipment that will just keep ‘producing’ without the need to calibrate, correct frequently.

Despite a volatile environment, how are you managing to keep growth momentum going?
At EMAG India, we have diversified providing manufacturing solutions to non-automotive component manufacturers since 2019. Non-automotive segment continues to grow in India in double digits due to enormous infrastructure activities going around the country. Domestic automotive component manufacturers too are investing in high-end precision equipment due to the attractive RoI they provide on a long-term basis. These factors have helped us keep our growth momentum despite global uncertainties.

What are key challenges on the path at present? And, is worst of supply chain issues and rising raw material prices behind us?
Delivery lead times of our suppliers is a biggest challenge now. Especially on controllers and wiring harnesses, some of the deliveries are at an all-time high of 12 months now. This puts a serious pressure on the delivery of our machines and automation.

At EMAG, we are trying to optimise on our sourcing decision so that FIFO is followed in letter & spirit and our customers who plan ahead, get to have the machine at the committed lead times. Besides, we also support our customers to refurbish the older EMAG machines and involve in providing a new set of chuck & tooling for the new component that customer wants to machine. This will help our customers immensely to provide samples to their end customers quickly without having to wait for the new machine to produce those samples.

What are the key trends in the industry? And, how is your company tapping these trends?
Today, customers want many manufacturing solutions from a single supplier. This increases accountability and brings in an element of ‘peace’ to the customer. Imagine a customer speaking to three vendors, one for soft turning, second for grinding and third for automation. This has a tendency to make the entire process less reliable as there are three parties involved. Any issue in one operation may affect the other. Challenge will be fix the root cause that has resulted in non- compliance of the part.

At EMAG, we provide the entire value stream of a manufacturing process. Be it soft machining, hard turning, milling, grinding, gear hobbing, laser cleaning, laser welding, gear teeth grinding, shaving, thermal shrink fit assemblies including automation. With this, customer does not have to run around coordinating various suppliers in the process. Entire accountability wrests with EMAG. This is a growing trend today and will be the future of manufacturing.

Are you planning to launch new products? If yes, could you please elaborate?

Through the acquisition of Samutensili, EMAG SU now offers gear grinding, hobbing and shaving under one roof.

We are coming with a bigger version of vertical turning machine, which will cater mainly to Medium Commercial Vehicle (MCV) and CV segment. This is expected to be launched in Q4 of this year. Besides, EMAG is continuously improving the existing platform with an aim to reduce the cycle time and increase consistent throughput.

Sustainability is a buzzword in industries. What steps are you taking to (A) reduce your carbon footprint and (B) help end-use industries (i.e. your customers) to achieve their sustainability goals?
At EMAG, we produce our machine bases and columns out of Mineralit, which is quite different from the traditional cast iron that most machine tool manufacturers use. This reduces the need for cast iron in our machines for the bases and columns, a first major step to sustainability. Besides, Mineralit has an excellent dampening property that will aid longer cutting tool life and stability in the whole process till the life of EMAG machine.

Apart from this, all our manufacturing facilities use natural resources optimally, where air, sunlight and water is used with utmost care and minimised to the barest need.

What are your growth plans for the future?
At EMAG India, we see a huge potential in Indian market besides the huge opportunities in exports as well. This being the case, we will continue to grow far above the industry growth rate to tap this potential. As a geographic shift in the manufacturing is taking place into India, we see a tremendous opportunity for our India customers to scale up their capacity to cater to this demand. Since EMAG offers unique advantage of reliable manufacturing solutions offering agility to the customers, we see a sustained growth path ahead. We also connect very strongly with our customers throughout the country with our ‘Industry First’ marketing initiative, Technology Days. This forum offers immense opportunities for exchange of ideas and pushes us as ‘ONE EMAG’ team to come up with breakthrough technologies & solutions.