Established in 1994, Hoshi Tools Pvt Ltd is a company specialising in manufacturing special purpose indexable type custom designed cutting tools. Hoshi Tools also provide services to manufacture, precision components for aerospace industries, machine tool builders, ancillary units for various industries etc on a regular supply basis. In this interview, J Vijaykumar, Director, Hoshi Tools, shares his perspective on Indian machine tools industry and his growth plans for company.

 

 

How is Indian machine tools & metal cutting sector?

The Indian industry, especially automobile & aerospace, is showing fast growth rate, especially automobile and machine tools, which gives, lot of scope for the service industries. The major industries are in the process of launching new products, diversification and automation. The tooling potential in metal cutting industries is about 10-12 per cent of the total manufacturing investment, that is where our business comes from. 

 

How is your company serving the metal cutting sector?

Strict adherence to international quality standards & delivery schedules has paid off for us, in getting domestic as well as global orders. Customers include leaders in varied industries, such as, automobile, machine tool builders, aerospace, die & mould, press tools, forging, earth-moving equipment etc. With the dedicated sales & marketing team attending to the customers’ requirements, which are being realised by stream lined design-through-manufacturing systems. Adaptation of Computer Integrated Manufacturing (CIM) through advanced software of 3 dimensional Parametric CAD & CAM for fast interactive results, thus be able to produce quality products of international standards.

Hoshi Tools, spread across an area of 12,000 sq ft, the shop floor includes production centre, comprising of CNC vertical machining centres, CNC turning centres, super-drilling and laser etching machines, integrated advanced CAD/CAM and quality control equipment. It is well supported by in-house conventional machine set-up. 

 

To increase customer delight, we have been constantly improving our processes through evolving advanced technologies & serving our customers better, by offering shorter delivery schedules, providing on-site application service in order to improve their productivity & reducing cycle time in production. Several customers have been able to realise the performance improvements as well as cycle time reductions of about 20-40 per cent, thus cost reduction in production.

 

What is driving the demand for our products?

Every day the desire and demands by the end users of the products will be changing very fast, which is forcing, introduction/expansion of automation in manufacturing industries. Cost of the end product and shorter time to market, are the main concern of the industries, in the face of competitive business. This is one of the reasons for special tooling requirements. Thus, there is lot of scope for custom designed cutting tools. 

 

What is the market share for Hoshi Tools products?

Our major share of custom tools is from South Indian industries, and we can claim about 20 per cent of tooling requirements of South Indian industries for our category of tools. We also have our sales/marketing in North Indian sector, which is slowly increasing our market share.

Since we are custom designed cutting tools manufacturers, mainly carbide oriented, we would be able to provide services to any metal cutting industries where there is an emphasis for productivity. In this way, we primarily cater to industries where high production volumes of components are produced. Apart from special tools, we also manufacture precision components for machine tools and rollers for steel rolling mills, on regular supply contract basis.

 

What are expectations from IMTEX 2019 / Tooltech 2019?

We have been frequently participating in national & international exhibitions. This year also we are exhibiting at IMTEX 2019/Tooltech 2019 along with our group company CNC India (P) Ltd. Naturally, we expect to expand our customer base and scope of business. We are also looking forward to joint ventures with willing partners of proven track records. In this regard, we have business partnership with AKKO, Turkey, for standard turning tools & milling cutters and CPT – Carbide Precision Tools, Germany, for standard & custom threading tools and mills.

 

We wish all the exhibitors of IMTEX 2019 / TOOLTECH 2019, success in their efforts and let us hope to mutually benefit through platform.