Soaring High

India’s machine tool industry has its gaze fixed firmly upon Aerospace and Defence sectors, recognizing them as new sunshine markets. The country’s developing infrastructure and the government’s attempts at providing impetus to ‘Make in India’ through its investor-friendly policies such as Defence procurement policy and Strategic partner policy, present an attractive and significant opportunity for the foreign firms to forge alliances with the local players to make equipment for the two sectors.

Making full use of this opportunity, OEMs and their suppliers are leveraging India’s competitive advantages in manufacturing by setting up units in India. Bharat Forge, Reliance Industries, the Tata group, Ashok Leyland, Larsen & Toubro, the Godrej Group and the Mahindra Group are some examples that have entered into such strategic partnerships, with the latest being the
Adani Group.

“In continuation of our vision of nation building, we are keen to play an instrumental role in helping transform India into a destination for world class high-tech defence manufacturing,” says Gautam Adani, Chairman, Adani Group over its tie-up with Sweden’s Saab to bid for defence deals in India, with a focus on manufacturing Gripen fighter jets in the country.

Global players important for Indian firms

The Indian industry with all its capabilities is still at a stage of evolution. Collaborating with its global counterparts will help it gain access to critical technology needed to build armed forces.

According to Dr Wilfried Schaefer, Executive Director, German Machine Tool Builders’Association, VDW, European machine tool manufacturers, especially German ones, are in a very good shape for supplying to the aerospace sector. “Since progressively more components in an aircraft are being manufactured with the aid of industrial-scale 3D printing, companies here have excellent opportunities to score highly on the up-and-coming Indian aerospace market,” he adds.

This is because in regard to additive manufacturing processes for metal components, especially, German manufacturers are playing a front-runner role. These processes enable lighter and more stable structural components to be produced.

Challenges encountered

With all the developments happening, there is still a lot of room for the Indian machine tool industry to optimally cater to the precise requirements of aerospace and defence sectors. Shailesh Sheth, Past President & Mentor, IMTMA lists several constraints to entering into the space.

“Manufacturing aerospace components is not everyone’s cup of tea. It is recognized that metalworking machine tools and manufacturing technologies required by aerospace sector are specialized – large in size, requiring very different approach in the entire process of ‘design to delivery’. These include a unique set of knowledge, skills, precision, technology-intensive focus,” he says.

However, Vikram Salunke, Managing Director, Accurate Gauging & Instruments Pvt Ltd, strongly feels that there is a lack of awareness of local machine tooling capabilities of India among most global companies involved in aerospace. “Hence, most recommendations of RFQ, therefore, refer to few international brands, which becomes a show stopper for an Indian company to get an equal opportunity during the bidding process.”

Another challenge is the sector’s demand for specialized materials, accuracy and quality check process. “In order to fulfill these, local machine tool manufacturers need to develop non-conventional processes and technologies,” opines Milind Kelkar, Chairman, Grind Master Group.

Understanding the economics of investment by the buyers in aerospace industry is yet another essential feels Vivek Nigam, Executive Vice-President & Head of Business Unit – Machine Building, Isgec Heavy Engineering Ltd. “Investments are made for long term and low price is mostly not a criterion.”

“There is a need to focus on the consistency in the precision class of machines, in order to be a global player in this sector. The challenge is to develop machines which perform consistently in-spite of thermal variations due to the heat generated in the machines, especially the ones used in tropical regions. We are working towards providing these solutions. The Indian machine tool industry also needs to look at building larger machines for structural parts of aircrafts. This segment is at present addressed only by overseas manufacturers,” explains Soundhar Rajhan, President, Machine Tool Division, LMW.

Industry gearing up

Despite various odds, the machine tool manufacturers of the country such as Jyoti CNC Automation are relentlessly trying harder to make the most of the present opportunities in the aerospace and defence sector with their innovations. The result of which is a host of awe inducing names in its client list including BrahMos Aerospace; ISRO (SAC - Space Application Centre, VSSC- Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre); Tata Sikorsky Aerospace Ltd, Tata Advanced Systems Ltd; Huron; Heavy Alloy Penetrator Project; Airbus; Boeing; Bombardier; European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company and Sukhoi.

The company’s offerings for the sector include: KX FIVE Series, HSM concept that enables operations in 5-axis simultaneous from roughing to finishing of a variety of complex high precision applications, especially designed for complex aerospace components and high integrity mechanical parts manufacturing.

UCAM is well ahead with its basket of advanced 5-axis solutions and is already supplying these to international OEM customers for aerospace parts machining.

Grind Master too has strategic alliances with MJC, USA for its Flow Forming technology; ACT Robotics, USA for Robotic Grinding & Finishing of Turbine Blade; and Timesavers, Holland for Robotic Grinding & Finishing of Turbine Blade. “These partners are well-established and regularly supply their technology to Aerodef sectors,” informs Kelkar.

Project AeroDef

The project came into being when the need to aid local machine tool players overcome hurdles in catering to aerospace and defence sectors and curtailing imports was strongly felt by the Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association (IMTMA). Hence, the name AeroDef.

“Around 65-70 percent of India’s defence requirement is imported from global aerospace and defence companies, making it world’s eighth largest purchaser of defence armament and equipment. India’s spending in next five years is expected to be $25 billion for commercial and $100 billion for defence aircrafts. Assuming an offset of 30 percent, total offset opportunity for aerospace sector alone is valued at minimum $10-15 billion of manufactured parts, if not more,” points out Sheth.

As a first step, on Baba Kalyani’s suggestion, IMTMA organized technology missions to various institutions in the UK, Germany and Spain. Through the project, IMTMA aims, with some encouragement and support, to groom the Indian machine tool players to quickly graduate to meet these specialized requirements. The process is to first select companies on the basis of their capabilities. An agency is then hired to help them through documentation, get them trained for the certifications required, and put their internal systems in proper order.

The key projects objectives are to:

Expose and familiarize select industry CEOs to advance and high technology developments at leading global aerospace institutions; Meet and interact with manufacturers of aerospace raw materials, components, and machines for the aerospace and component industries; Understand the type and nature of metalworking machine tools and manufacturing technologies required for aerospace and defence manufacturing, to enable indigenous development and manufacture in India; and Explore possible alliances with machine manufacturers, so as to jointly exploit market opportunities in the Indian aerospace and defence industries.

Industry expectations from AeroDef

According to Soundhar Rajhan, “AeroDef can create a platform in India for knowledge sharing on the technical requirements such as materials, methods and machinability. This will help the Indian suppliers respond faster to the requirements of the Aerospace OEMs, rather than each company spending enormous time and money to arrive at results, which have already been established by the Aerospace OEMs.

“Machine tool and tooling companies can offer their products and services to cater to global requirements helping several defence players fulfil their offset obligations. The new defence procurement policy has provided certain measures in this direction. An effective awareness of this is required to be generated among the customers as well as various trade promotion bodies of like CII, FICCI, ASSOCHEM,” says Salunke.

For Nigam, AeroDef Project can substantially contribute in amplifying influence of ‘Make-in-India’ pitch, particularly in Government controlled investments. As a group, it can highlight opportunities offered by Defence sector to its members. It can contribute in bringing an open mindset among public and private sector buyers for indigenous development. Organizing meet ups at different forums of equipment users and selectors can make them aware of high reliability and productivity of Indian machine tools.