How Schmersal Group is serving its customers and the industry?
The efforts of the Schmersal group have for many years been directed at producing products for safety at the workplace. From the most varied mechanical and electro sensitive switching devices, the largest range in the world of safety switching devices and safety switching systems for the protection of man and machine has come into being. Today we have around 41,000 customers, 16,000 products and 7 manufacturing sites across the globe. We are into safety products, industry solutions and safety services. We aim to make workplaces a safer place with the help of our customers and partner. We want to be the system and solution provider where we can understand the problems of our customers and fulfil their requirements regardless of the industry they are coming from.

What role does India play in the safety industry?
The development of the Schmersal Group has been amazing in the past years. Globally, our main drivers are Asia, the US, Europe etc, though the European market is a little slowing down today. But in Asia, we are pushing a lot of investment in India because we believe that India can be the next hub for the Asian market for safety. If we compare the past years, the awareness of safety has increased in India amongst customers and the government. Digitalisation of the internal process, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) technologies, virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) etc have risen at a significant rate in the past few years in India.

According to me, the Indian market is in the driver's seat today. In India, we have a backlog of logistics and infrastructure. The country is keenly investing a lot in infrastructure and logistics at the moment, which is also a key driver for Schmersal. We believe in the education system of India and the qualification of engineers here. We lack this kind of qualification in Europe and the US. We look to invest in people, provide them with training and believe that India will be a good service hub.

What are some current trends in the safety market?
The world of automation has changed the outlook of the industry. Technology is the key driver for today and the need of tomorrow. Technological developments in automotive such as 3D cameras, Radar, LiDar, Ultrasonic etc can be real game changers in the industry. Though these technologies are mainly driven by area protection, we are working to develop more usage out of it. From the software perspective, we learned that people are a bit lost when we're talking about Industry 4.0 and other terms. Nowadays, it's easy to collect and save data, but it is more about what you do with this kind of data. We are trying to help our customer to pick and analyse the data rightly to bring productivity, especially in safety.

Automation is a driving factor in the industry today. How has the concept of smart factories affected Schmersal and its operations?
The smart factory has two sides, and one side is us, Schmersal. It is a bit tricky because we have standardised production facilities around the globe. Our customers label it as made in China, made in India etc, but for me, it is all made at Schmersal. We have one standard process around the globe and connected factories, for example, when we talk about injection moulding and plastic, we have around 35 injection moulding machines around the globe, and they are all connected. In smart factories, ‘smart’ means to be more efficient and we focus on that. From the production perspective, one of the major factors with Schmersal is we provide customised solutions to our customers. We do not work on high volumes except for our standard products. We have orders coming in for 50-100 pieces and it is more driven to manual work. That’s why automation becomes a bit of a tricky thing for us.

The other side of the coin is our customers. They love smart factories because they want to have a high automation grade. We have improved a lot in this with smart connectors, field boxes etc. So, we can drive those smart factories with our safety 4.0 products.

Sustainability is a buzz word today. What are some key focuses in this lead at Schmersal?
Sustainability is key for us. We have incorporated solar panels, electric driving cars, etc. We try to use raw materials which have no carbon footprint. In India, currently, we have solar panels missing, but we are working on investment approval for them soon. Because we have standard products around the globe, raw materials and the process is standardised. I believe, there can be no excuse when it comes to safety, as it is all about human life. We have suggestions coming in from some countries to use cheaper raw materials like plastic just to save two cents per item. But it is not in line with our expectations from a quality perspective.

What are your growth plans in the coming years in India?
India has shown impressive progress over the past decade. When we established our facility in 2013, the Indian GDP was $1.8 trillion, but today it has grown up to $3.7 trillion. Exports have also grown tremendously from $200 billion to over $750 billion today. We are looking to double our production by 2025 in India with 100 per cent localisation by 2026. We aim to target renewable energy usage by 50 per cent of the total by 2026. We are also planning to start an electronics product assembly at our plant in India. One of intentions for my visit to India is to look for some real estate to expand our manufacturing footprint in India. We also aim for in-house accredited QC labs by 2026.