R&D is the pillar on which manufacturing stands. A company with a strong focus on R&D and innovative products will face a lower attrition rate.
by Jayashree Mendes
Everyone talks about manufacturing innovations and novelty. Companies want new products to be introduced regularly in the market. They want flexibility in manufacturing and this is something that has never been as important as it is today. Moreover, with customers demanding new and advanced products, manufacturing companies are compelled to go back to the drawing board and come up with innovations. And innovations come from a strong research & development.
Ideally, a diligent company will invest about 3-5% of its turnover on R&D and design. Those who do so and come up with remarkable products will be at an advantage. The ability to design, develop, manufacture and support bespoke products puts companies in a different league altogether. It is always better that companies have their own R&D wing so that in the long run it gives a price competitive advantage.
Raghav Gulur, MD, ZF India Technology Centre (ITC), says, “We have strong technical expertise and depth in developing and producing systems and components for passenger cars and commercial vehicles. R&D is fundamental to us. As one of the largest automotive suppliers worldwide, we invest about 6% of sales turnover in R&D, thus ensuring continued success through the design and engineering of innovative technologies. The ZF India Technology Centre (ITC) inaugurated last year focuses 80% on software and 20% on mechanical engineering activities and plays a pivotal role in the development of vehicle technology. ZF India’s R&D team will soon advance to a position where they will support the R&D teams across the globe to jointly develop futuristic technologies that will define the automotive landscape of tomorrow.”
Developing an in-house R&D capability allows companies to adapt its product range. This means when a customer gives manufacturers their product specifications, it’s likely that they may already have a close fit. Expanding the product range isn’t the only positive outcome of having an onsite R&D facility.
Jean-Baptiste Milleret, product development head, IMEA, packaging & consumer goods, Henkel Adhesive Technologies, says, “Henkel’s vision statement, ‘leading with our innovations, brands and technologies,’ indicates the importance innovation holds for us. The responsibility that we feel towards our customers and consumers, our people and society, has shaped the history of our company. In conducting our business, we want to create sustainable value through innovative solutions.”
Henkel’s Adhesive Technologies business in India has a Product Development Centre that is housed in its Thane manufacturing site and caters to the innovation needs of its packaging & consumer products SBU, while our Innovation Centre at Pune caters to the general industry and transport & metal SBUs. At present, it has a core team of 50 engineers and scientists at the Innovation Centre and a sizeable team at the Product Development Centre. At both the locations, various teams work on myriad chemistries/ technologies, developing products and innovations for local, regional and global customers.
Bold and subtle
There the three advantages that manufacturing companies need to be aware of when considering R&D:
a) Those companies who have been investing regularly in R&D and coming up with innovations are bound to be noticed by global companies and by firms internationally.
b) Manufacturing firms should be aware of where they want to take their firm. The most innovative firms are always trying to build competitive advantage and not reluctant to invest more into R&D knowing that it can have a long gestation period.
c) It helps to remember that behind the scenes there is a solid relationship between those who spend on R&D and the way the company performs. Continued successes of small innovations add to the larger picture.
Kalyan Sridhar, country manager, PTC, says, “Since 1985, PTC has been enabling customers to stay one step ahead of the competition by combining strategic vision with leading, field proven technology, helping companies to achieve their business goals. In 1988, we developed parametric, associative feature-based, solid computer-aided design (CAD) modeling software. As technology evolved over the next decade, in 1998, we developed an Internet-based product for product lifecycle management (PLM). Our solutions enabled manufacturers to design, operate and maintain complex products.”
He adds that in the last two decades, PTC has noted a tremendous acceleration in development and implementation of new digital technologies such as Augmented Reality and IoT on a global scale. Customers are open to implementing newer solutions to achieve their business goals at a much faster rate. “At PTC, we identified an opportunity in India to implement PTC’s strategy as a leading provider of technologies and solutions that blend the digital and physical worlds. PTC leverages two transformational technology trends – IoT and AR – that allows us to deliver a new class of products to our customers in India,” he says.
CV Raman, head of engineering, Maruti Suzuki, says, “While vehicle design, development and testing require the most sophisticated equipment, more important is to develop capability of engineers over time to optimally utilise these facilities to ensure customer satisfaction. Over the last decade, Maruti Suzuki has systematically trained and developed engineers for R&D by giving them exposure to new model development as well as doing special projects along with the more experienced engineers at SMC Japan on design and technology. Nearly 35% of R&D engineers in Maruti Suzuki (MSIL) have already been trained at Suzuki, Japan, for up to two years, and built the competence to create attractive vehicles with advanced features and high quality and safety.”
MSIL R&D’s first success was the facelift of the iconic vehicle, Zen, in 2003, followed by co-design of Swift with the Suzuki global R&D team in 2005 and a working on the full body change of Alto in 2012. Competence of the team grew steadily as more models and technologies were introduced, leading up to the compact SUV, Vitara Brezza in 2016. The world-class testing facilities at Rohtak and the capability of Maruti Suzuki engineers have now converged. Working in close partnership with the R&D team in Suzuki, Japan, MSIL will be able to test and evaluate vehicles at this R&D centre.
Fast and furious
Those who don’t want to go to lengths of investing in an R&D centre are likely to outsource. Many of them even tie up with academic institutions for procuring know-how. For instance, Elgi Equipments has established relationships with a number of academic and research institutions to enhance Elgi’s technological capabilities. For example, it has a project based partnership with a local engineering university, whose faculty and students partner with them on improving specific areas of compressor design. “We have an active project to improve the quality of our compressor housing. From a training perspective, we sponsor our strongest engineers for a graduate programme in technology to enhance their engineering and design skills. Our manufacturing philosophy is based on vertical integration for quality. Our captive foundry allows for high levels of quality control in our castings, while our in-house designed compressor machining centres allows us to produce our proprietary compressor rotors with low tolerances. These two initiatives provide high levels of flexibility in improving existing products and producing new products while giving us a cost advantage,” says Anvar Jay Varadaraj, head, marketing & corporate communication, Elgi Equipments.
In terms of technologies, it recently launched Air Alert, a SIM-card based communication device that will monitor and transmit key compressor metrics such as temperature, flow, pressure, and power consumption to Elgi. The device will also provide maintenance alerts. The device offers peace of mind to customers that their machines are constantly monitored, thereby mitigating failures and ensuring that maintenance schedules are adhered to.
In 2017, ZF ITC launched the ZF Innovation Challenge exclusively for engineering students in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana. This was an opportunity for the institution to showcase their student’s proficiency in current technology topics and compete with peer institutions. It helped in gaining major mindshare from industry partners for strategic alliances with the institute and job opportunities for students. The event got an overwhelming response with over 1,000 students participating in the challenge. “We received a range a projects in the field of autonomous driving, connectivity, drones, IoT, digital transformation, and disruptive technologies. Post this, we received a number of requests for further collaboration opportunities with reputed engineering institutes and are now seeking to forge a stronger industry-academia relationship,” says Gulur.
ZF has been an innovator in introducing disruptive technologies in the mobility field. It was the pioneer in bringing Electric Park Brake (EPB) technology to the world. It was the first to market globally its EPB system in 2001, which pioneered in Lancia, Audi, VW and more recently on the BMW X4 and BMW i8, Jeep Renagade, Fiat 500X, Ford 150, Honda Accord, Nissan Qashqai, Range Rover Evoque and more.
In developing products, Maruti Suzuki R&D focuses on the pillars of design, technology, comfort & convenience and infotainment, along with advanced safety. This may require fitting additional equipment, which increases vehicle weight and impacts fuel efficiency, emission and performance. To meet advanced regulations in safety as well as emissions without compromising performance, an overall optimisation of vehicle design and systems is essential. The global R&D team at Suzuki, Japan and MSIL has developed a new 5th generation vehicle platform that is designed to provide advanced safety to occupants, without compromising on fuel efficiency, emission or performance. Called Total Effective Control Technology (TECT), this breakthrough innovation ensures that the vehicle is safer, stronger, 10% more rigid while being 15% lighter.
At Henkel, some of its disruptive technologies indigenously developed either include Loctite PC 7000, a high temperature abrasion resistant coating, used for protecting components against abrasion up to 1100°C. It not only extends the life coal tip burner by up to two times but is also cost effective. Then there is water based chloroprene rubber adhesive for the sports and fashion industry that was developed to replace solvent based products with an aim to offer health and safety benefits to the applicators and customers.
That is how R&D helps. It leads to superior innovations that reach markets faster, and ensures things are done in time and in the right manner.