TÜV Rheinland understands the gravity of safety & quality. it is The reason they test everything.
In October, TÜV Rheinland India, a subsidiary of the TÜV Rheinland Group, Germany, expanded its footprint in India with a new 2.5 million Euro facility at Electronic City in Bengaluru. The new purpose-built 14,000m2 facility makes TÜV Rheinland India the first international testing, training, inspection, consulting and certification (TIC) organisation operating in the country to house its state-of-the-art laboratories under a single roof. The idea is to offer customers a complete solution that will reduce turnaround time and accelerate time-to-market.
For the inauguration on October 6, the core management team of TÜV Rheinland, Germany, comprising Dr. Michael Fübi, CEO of TÜV Rheinland Group and Andreas Höfer, CEO & President, IMEA & Asia Pacific, TÜV Rheinland were present along with Thomas Fuhrmann, MD, TÜV Rheinland India. In an interaction after the launch, the trio spelt out their plans for the Indian market and how Germany works closely with India.
TÜV Rheinland is not a company that many outside the core industry sectors would be familiar with. Though the company has been present in India since 1996, and has a presence across 100 locations in India alone, the Group has been providing safety and quality service to customers for the last 145 years globally. With around 1,000 employees in India alone, it provides services such as electrical tests, material tests, automobile and components testing, textile tests, among others.
Excerpts from the interview:
How important is testing and measurement for the kind of markets you cater to in India?
Dr Michael Fübi: India is seeing an increase in awareness on safety and quality. Companies here follow international developments in regard to such aspects. We are also looking at trends in renewable energy. So in PVs, we offer risk related services, as infrastructure projects is a part of our service call. I see tremendous investment potential from Indian companies in solar energy.
How do you work with customers? Do you set up a facility at their plant or bring their products to your plant and test it?
Thomas Fuhrmann: Typically we bring the products into our facilities. We test them here in our laboratories such as the one in Bengaluru. But if it’s a bigger machinery, then we go to the customer site and test the equipment there.
We have a strong focus on infrastructure projects such as energy, power plants, and oil & gas industry. For example, we have to take care of the supply chain and ensure that the products bought by clients from various vendors match the quality requirements. Our job is to ensure safety. So if someone is building a gas power plant, we attend to the explosive atmosphere related aspects and make sure that health and safety requirements are fulfilled. Another aspect here is fulfilling the requirements of getting the right qualification to fill the job so that is how we contribute to infrastructure projects.
Can you tell me about the recent initiatives such as TUV AMTZ or the EPCH partnership?
Dr Michael Fübi: We have been invited by the government to contribute to build a hub for the medical industry. In Andhra Pradesh, we are now a partner to the government to built an EMC lab and material test lab. Here we have invested about $1.5 million, which will allow the industry to build production centres for mdeical devices and satisfy the demand here. India intends to reduce the percentage of imported goods. Currently 80% of medical devices are imported even if they are designed in India. GE has a huge development centre in Bengaluru, but there is little capacity or infrastructure to build such kind of products here.
There should be stringent rules to ensure that every product that leaves a shop floor is tested for safety and other compliance issues. If we refer to Europe or America, there is a system in place that enables a manufacturer to certify their product themselves. There are different categories of products that have to be tested and certified by a third party but the manufacturer can certify about 95% of the products in the market himself. We have strict standards and a control system in place that verifies certified products meet the standards they ought to.
How do Indian companies approach you with the numerous kinds of offerings you have?
Thomas Fuhrmann: Indian companies understand that to become a global player they need to partner with a company who can provide full scale services. That starts with qualifying the products, implementing quality management system, and we help them develop state-of the-art products by certifying that product partner for them. It’s an ongoing process and we constantly check quality and monitor the safety standards for them.
Countries like Europe will not accept products from outside if they are not certified. They don’t trust the manufacturer, but need someone from the supply chain. That’s how companies look at us.
Could you tell me the top down approach you have for the Asia Pacific market?
Andreas Höfer: We started ensuring quality and safety in Germany 140 years ago and a little more than 30 years ago started to implement it on a global scale. Today we are active on all continents and see a growing demand. We’ve more than 20,000 people in our Group. Of that 3,500 are in China since there’s a lot of manufacturing coming from China. That is because manufacturers there don’t want a recall. They want an independent third party testing the product to ensure they are high quality, which the retailers then sell in Europe or in the US.
With the Make in India approach, we expect to see manufacturing spike and the same will then apply to India.
Could you tell us about the R&D investments you make?
Thomas Fuhrmann: We develop test methods and the same testing machines are then used across the globe. For example, in Silicon Valley we have built a new lab for EMC testing because there is much technology development happening there.
If you want to be successful in the long term, it is imperative that companies adopt such strategies, which calls for considering quality and safety. Sometimes companies develop products through third-parties, but the reputation of a business solely lies on how businesses are staying sustainable by selling the right products in the market.
We have been seeing a double digit growth in the Indian market.