Presenting the first edition of the “Champions of Change’ series panel discussion, powered by Seco Tools. With a vision of ‘Finding synergy, exploring solutions’, this series by Pro MFG Media aims to focus on the automotive industry.
Sharing his valuable insights on the manufacturing opportunities developing in the OEM segment, Mr. Vivek Gosain, General Manager (Manufacturing Engineering), MG Motors elaborated that the Indian automotive market is already in a transition phase with EVs in the picture. Hence focusing on efficiency in manufacturing is extremely essential. At the same time, complexities have increased across the production lines because a large number of products, which require to be placed in different segments, are driven out by customer demands at the same time.
Asked about the emerging trends in the automotive industry, Mr. Gosain emphasized that the trends are based on the best utilization of capital resources, highly flexible production lines for multimodal production, keeping only critical sub-assemblies processes in house and rest of the non-critical processes to be outsourced from tier one suppliers. Focus is also on error-proofing and ensuring a good built-in quality that improves efficiency. Also, as the customer demands many features, the focus on safety requirements is critical. At the same time, the industry is facing a lot of high costs in terms of logistics and availability of materials.
Shedding light on the best practices to build agile manufacturing systems, Mr. K Ganesan, AVTEC, CK Birla Group emphasized that availability of skilled people is a big challenge these days. He went on to stress on multi-skilling, multitasking and upskilling of employees across the organization. He added that ,“ We have built process quality systems and process manufacturing that minimizes operator involvement and these processes stabilize involvement of people, right from the supervisor to manager to frontline workers. Another important consideration is the coolant because the design of tools is mainly depending on the usage of the quality of coolant. “
Asked about how Seco collaborates with its customers and becomes part of a continuous improvement program so as to compete globally, Mr. Andreas Fritz, VP-Global(Sales & Marketing) and Chairman of Board at Seco India emphasized that Seco has always been the partner to improve cycle times, costs per component, and enhance the whole manufacturing process around the machines for its customers.
He went on to add, “I think times are shifting not only due to the pandemic, but also due to sustainability and environmental aspects. We together should focus on minimizing metal removal, going near net shape as much as possible, replacing pre machining processes, and then finish the component in the right way with the solutions with partners, which require different programming, different technologies and cutting tools, We are spending a lot of time and efforts in R&D and product management to ensure our products are focused on Sustainability.
Speaking about the best practices for talent development to receive and upskill the workforce, Mr. Per Norell, VP (Global HR), Seco Tools said “We have around 4100 colleagues around the world. And we are united around our shared values, which is passion for customers, the family spirit and the personal commitment. That is what unites us and looking at the geographical spread of the company, we are a Swedish based headquartered global company and 30% of our employees are in Sweden. But the second largest in terms of headcount is in India, which is about 30% and we are growing continuously. We are set out to make sure that we have the human touch going hand in hand with premium technology and services as well. And working with this ambition, of course, makes talent development and talent management also very important.”
Summarizing the discussion, Mr. Norbert Konig, VP-Sales for the Asia Pacific region at Seco, It's interesting to see how the supply chains are connected. Driven by the demands from the customer, many variants are produced for the car manufacturers, ensuring that the quality challenges due to the same during assembly are addressed, and requests for better component dimensions from tier one/ two suppliers are seen. “I think that is a really good example of the need to collaborate , which we need to develop for the future rather than trying to solve the issues on our own. As it's difficult to solve all these demands coming from the user through isolated solutions or companies. The second area which is also important is the speed we need to develop based on the market dynamics. The preparedness to change is also dependent on the environment and the guidance which is provided by the Government.”, he added.
The session was expertly moderated by Mr. Manish Kulkarni, Director, Pro MFG Media.
Delivering the vote of thanks, Mr. Yogesh Hingane, Sales Head( India) at Seco, went on to say that “Today, we had one OEM and a tier one supplier together on this platform and what came out very strongly is that we need to develop an ecosystem around collaboration for taking the auto industry forward.”
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