Technology centres help enhance customer centricity
It is an era of cut throat competition and companies are trying to make every possible effort to be one step ahead of each other to meet the needs of the customer. Customer centric approach has forced companies to innovate and optimise the process of manufacturing. In the quest to increase customer orientation and develop innovative solutions for the industry, the concept of tech centres has taken centre stage. A technology centre keeps its parent company competitive on a long-term basis through the development of intellectual property and new products based on market pull as well as technology push. “Identifying customer’s needs often before they realize it themselves and creating the right solution, drives business growth,” says Vivek Bhonsle, MD, Walter Tools India. Therefore, for Walter, it is most important to leverage the voice of the market and respond to their dynamic requirements. “Walter India’s recently inaugurated state-of-the-art technology centre is a live example of innovation and technology, a step to wards customer engagement,” adds Bhonsle. Similarly, GE’s John F Welch Technology Centre (GE JFWTC) is a showcase of ability to deliver product design and intellectual property to the parent company.
The success of the manufacturing industries is mainly dependent on innovations, research and development. “Therefore, it is highly necessary to remain competitive and advantages can be gained by developing and marketing new technologies,” opines Sanjay Koul, MD and director, Manufacturing, Timken India Ltd. Opening tech centres seems to be a profitable marketing strategy for companies. Agreeing, Arun Shivaram, director, Global Technical Centre India (GTCI), SKF India, asserts, “A technical centre in India can enable a company to function better in three broad areas: Speed of response to customers, understanding of local market needs and conditions and acting as a conduit in bringing global knowledge to local customers. It should complement a company’s vision by offering innovative solutions which cut across the value chain.”
The machining industry has seen rapid evolution during the past decade. The industry has a continuously evolving appetite for improvement, which calls for challenging applications, surfaces and materials to be machined. On top of that greater precision is needed to be achieved at an ever-increasing productivity rate with rock solid process security. Production bottlenecks and daily production runs leave little room for a safe and reliable implementation of more efficient processes. “In such a scenario, the technology centre serves as an ideal solution as it enables to develop, test and optimise processes and share valuable knowledge,” avers Bhonsle.
However, setting up technical centres is not all smooth sailing.Gopichand Katragadda, chairman & managing director, GE India Technology Centre says, “Regulatory processes need to be simplified and made more transparent to allow us to grow as an R&D destination. The graduate programmes in India must be strengthened to create a better pool of PhD talent.”
For SKF setting up of a technical centre in India was a strategic decision. “We opened the Global Technical Centre to serve our local customers with quality services and our efforts are directed on making bearings smarter. Today, the various labs in the centre have world class facilities comparable to other labs across SKF group globally,” avows Shivaram.
However, he has suggestions to dish out to companies who want to set up their technology centres. “Before starting a technical centre in India, a company should first analyse and decide on the purpose. It is critical to ask this question as setting up a technical centre in India at times could be a daunting task. The challenges may vary.”
A few examples would be: acquiring, developing and retaining talented engineers, connecting them to the global work-force to leverage the global footprint, balancing aspirations (growth and challenging work) of the engineers with the needs and purpose of the technical centre, creating an innovative culture and understanding the policies and norms in India pertaining to engineering, R&D and striking a balance.
However, once the initial hurdles are overcome, the benefits reaped by a company are enormous. A technical centre can enable a company to function better in various ways such as speed of response to customers, understanding the needs of local market and conditions and acting as a conduit in bringing global knowledge to local customers.
Talking further on the benefits, Vivek Sharma, MD, Yamazaki Mazak India Pvt Ltd professes, “Our tech centre features a range of multi-tasking machines, horizontal and vertical machining centres, lathes and laser-cutting machines. With this, we offer our customers cost-effective turnkey machining solutions, right from process planning to optimal selection of machines, design and manufacture of fixtures, cutting and component trials, backed up by inspection equipment like CMM, spindle repair facilities, training facility and an advanced spare parts storage and retrieval system.”
He further adds, “Spindle repair is something that no other company offers. There is no technology available for those kind of spindles in India. The only solution prior to us getting the machine was to send it to Japan, which increases cost and time.
Therefore, we decided to invest in bringing the technology here and it has benefitted our customers immensely.”
The technologists from GE JFWTC are inventors on more than 2250 patent applications filed by the parent GE Company. “We have delivered products for the globe and the region including low wind regime turbines, affordable healthcare products, regional locomotives, and multiphase oil and gas flow metering, solving some of the toughest problems for our customers,” stresses Katragadda.
For Timken, the technology centre in Bengaluru is one of its four captive innovation and development centres around the world. It provides its customers with a unique opportunity to access a global pool of engineering expertise and the latest technological advancements. “Customers rely on us for solutions ranging from design optimisation, reducing operating costs and providing expertise. The tech centre leads innovation in customer product and application engineering, manufacturing advancement, information technology and shared services. It is one-of-its-kind in India,” says Koul.
Walter’s tech centre has the capability to go deep into the manufacturing processes of their customers and show them solutions that will help produce more efficiently and productively using Walter’s tools. “Through this technology centre, we want to showcase reliable solutions for optimising machining productivity and efficiency. It has resulted in a lot of process optimisation projects and improved sales ratio. There have been live demonstrations as well as tailor-made customer events and trainings in resilient segments like railways, aerospace, power equipment and so on,” avers Bhonsle.
For SKF their tech centre located in Bengaluru has become an ‘innovation driver’. “The centre focuses on testing, product investigation, metallurgical/chemical analysis and on providing advanced technical knowledge for design, process and supplier validation. The centre helps us in conducting product analysis and has a fully equipped laboratory for metallurgy and chemistry, mechatronics and product investigation centre,” says Shivaram.
Tech centres have been predominantly used as a training ground for the prospective and existing customers by many companies. “There are many ways in which we use the tech centre,” avers Sharma. “We organise open houses to showcase trials, conduct trainings for our customers and take up special projects – for example, we prove to our customers first and then sell them the machine. We also sell the machine and do the process proof here which is cheaper than sending it to Japan and thus it benefits the customer again.”
The tech centres have also been a key enabler in developing and nurturing in-house engineering talents for few companies. For example, SKF has developed a robust e-learning portal in-house. Elaborating more, Shivaram says, “We are also sensitive to the fact that engineers in India, as compared to their global colleagues, have limited hands-on experience. To address this, we have created hands-on training modules in the automotive domain and are in the process of creating similar modules in the industrial segments as well.”
GE has developed programmes catering to the demographics of its employees. Katragadda explains, “The people leadership programmes include those designed for current line managers, future managerial talent, and women leaders. Technology leadership programmes include refreshers for applying theoretical knowledge to industrial problems through hands-on projects.” Timken has a variety of training resources, including training that can be tailored to an audience and delivered at site. “Where no standard training program exists to address the needs, we have a network of friction management and power transmissions experts around the world who can be called on to provide their bearing and steel expertise,” states Koul.
With the emergence of tech centres, producing prototypes or implementing new processes is no longer a means of sacrificing production machines. Prototypes can be produced, tried and tested for their real fitness away from daily operations. Production downtimes are therefore reduced to an absolute minimum. India, as an emerging market, is in one of its interesting phases of development. With many global companies having realised the potential and benefits (primarily being close to the customer) of setting up a tech centre in the country, it looks like a perfect marketing tool to drive innovation, quality in various processes and understand and provide the right value proposition to Indian customers.