Jacob Harpaz, president of IMC Group, sheds light on the launch of TungForce and other plans for India
Tungaloy is fairly young in India, yet you are targeting some phenomenal growth figures.
We are one of the oldest cutting tools company in the Japanese market. Not only do we have a great product range, but we have a huge amount of experience to back these products. We entered the Indian market in 2010 and established our office here to focus on the market. Slowly and steadily, we have built a team of performers who are now stationed across industrial locations. Also, we have launched TungForce, which is a range of innovative products to improve productivity and reduce cost per piece at the customers end.
I am sure that with our aggressive marketing we will be able to achieve the growth figures as planned and will be one of major players in the Indian cutting tools industry in a very short time.
Tell us about your recent launch, TungForce, and its place in the Indian market.
The TungForce range of products was launched in India in a spectacular event in the month of February. It was one of the biggest full day seminars attended by over 800 people. We have also introduced innovative products for all machining areas like turning, milling, drilling and grooving.
We launched through coolant holders for machining super alloys – Tjet. In addition, we brought in new grades for super alloys machining, which are working very well. Also, a new range of grooving tools – with four cutting edges – was launched. We have grooving tools for heavy machining.
Our range of new products in milling include the Do Force Tri, which are six-edge square shoulder mills, and Do Triple Mill, which can take three types of inserts on the same cutter body to offer flexibility to customers who are working on batch production and die & mould requirements. We also have new tools for high feed machining, which can work on higher depth of cut than existing cutters available in the market.
For drilling, there are new entrants like the DeepTri Drill, which is a very innovative solution to convert existing brazed gun drilling customers to the indexable drilling process. We have also expanded the range of our modular drilling system and it now covers diameters upto 26 mm.
In terms of products capability, all the products mentioned above are capable of changing the existing process and offer more productivity to the end user.
How does your Matrix machine help customers?
The Matrix machine is a step towards the tool management system, this helps customer to store their cutting tools near their machines, helps them to reduce the direct and indirect cost of cutting tools. The machine is capable of generating reports for inventory, purchase and tool consumption which can be sent to the users. We can check the trends of tool consumption and also review the component wise costing with MATRIX. The users are given a dedicated password to enable them to operate the same. This works safely and does not require a person to manage the tool store in the shifts. It thus saves on manpower and can effectively reduce the work load of the stores and purchase team. The machine can also be connected to the SAP system of the customer. This has multiple benefits and returns on investment are high.
What are some other ways in which Tungaloy helps its customers increase productivity, reduce cost and use resources optimally?
Our experienced team of application engineers work on offering the complete solution for any component drawing. We propose and offer the complete tooling solution – the focus is on reducing the cost per component and reducing the cycle time for such proposals. This is done for new machine tooling up and also for the existing processes running at the customers end. Instead of looking at one tool – we look at changing the entire process to give maximum benefit to the end users.
Tell us about your R&D facilities and some of your recent innovations?
As a group – we spend 10% of our revenues in R&D activities, this helps us to innovate and improve. We always strive to develop the latest products. Tungaloy has one of the best metallurgy available and with the combination of radical design elements, we have been able to develop the best tools. Some of the biggest innovations have been to develop the six cutting edge drills called Tung Six – we were the world’s first company to put a negative insert on drill, giving us the unique advantage of a six cutting edge. This drill is now one of the market leaders in this segment. Also, for the small diameter boring, we have been able to offer more number of cutting edges to the customer with our Do Mini bore range of products. The DoFeed series is a high feed milling solution with features to reduce load in the high feed application.
For side and face cutters, we have launched TungSlot which is an innovative slotting cutter with six cutting edges on the inserts. We see a major increase in the machining of super alloys for which we have launched the 8000 series with a new range of geometries to cater to tough applications.
How are these new products being received by Indian customers?
Our initial testing of products has led to excellent results. We have been able to match customers’ expectations to give more productive solution compared to their existing method of machining. The results and response have been very encouraging. Indian customers have been receptive to good products and technology and have shown a tremendous response to TungForce products and specially the new age tools in Milling and Slotting. Our products have performed significantly better and we are now trying to horizontally deploy the same.
Going forward, what are your expectations from India as a market?
We will always aim to provide the best of the service and products to the Indian market and customers. It is our aim to become one of the leading brands in the Indian market in the shortest time possible. The Indian economy will grow rapidly and we are sure that we will see lot of new projects and new MNC’s entering India in the days to come. Everyone is looking at India as one of the best manufacturing destinations – the make in India campaign run by the Indian government has attracted lots of interest and I am sure we will sure a huge jump in the Manufacturing industry in India.