Your association with Indo-MIM…
My father is the Chairman of Indo-MIM. I took over as Director – Operations after I came back from USA in 2007. Later, I took up the responsibility of the President in 2011. I was elevated to be the CEO of all the group companies of Indo-MIM during July 2012.

What are the various manufacturing techniques being followed at Indo-MIM?
Our’s is a Lean Six-Sigma and Kaizen focused company. It started about three years ago, when we engaged consultants Narayan Rao and Professor Mahesh Chinnagiri, who have collectively worked in Indian manufacturing for over 50 years. Narayan Rao has an expertise in implementing lean management systems on the shop floor and is intimately familiar with how to implement various TPS concepts. On the other hand, Professor Mahesh Chinnagiri is a member of the Indian Statistical Institute and runs an in-depth and comprehensive Six Sigma black belt training program in Bangalore.

Developing good improvement programs was tough and required patience. The concepts were new, and even our senior managers had a tough time figuring out how to apply them. So, we did the obvious – trained all senior managers in operations to become six sigma black belts and made them an integral part of the Kaizen process.  Even I am a certified Six-Sigma black belt and have attended numerous kaizen blitzes.

Under our initial Kaizen efforts, we focused on various types of waste elimination, but soon extended them to include the development of work-cells for production and achieving single piece flow in as many operations as possible. Single-piece flow is a very powerful lean concept with various applications on the shop floor. If properly applied in the context of a work cell, it can immediately improve per person productivity by 20-25% while simultaneously improving quality. That sounds unbelievable, but it is true.

However, improvement throughout is just one of the benefits of single piece flow. Moving operations away from batch processes towards flow operations will yield many other benefits like reduced inventory, ability to spot quality problems before too much WIP is processed, ability to focus engineers attention on quality problems faster due to less WIP, easy prioritisation of fixture and gauge improvements because the cell makes bottleneck operations visible, easier manpower planning by supervisors and most importantly helps instill critical thinking and analytic skills in junior level supervisors and operators.

Coming to our Six Sigma efforts, initially it focused on scrap reduction and improving the capability of manufacturing processes. Over the past three years, we have trained over 45 Six Sigma black belts and well over 100 green belts.  All process owners are black belts and many of them are ASQ certified. In any given year we will run anywhere from 10 to 20 blackbelt projects and perhaps 30 green belt projects. All projects run through a Six Sigma steering committed comprised of ASQ certified black belts and senior managers (of course many of the senior manager also passed the ASQ as well).  These projects go through a thorough mentoring process which is guided and directed by Professor Mahesh Chinnagiri.  He also conducts the black-belt and green-belt training classes alongside other faculty selected by him.

Lean Manufacturing proposes a platform to ensure that inventories are maintained low.  Ideally, zero Inventory is the best, but is not possible given the lead times for manufacturing products and minimum batch quantities required for certain processes.  Hence, systems such as ‘Kanban’ are applied. Prof. Chinnagiri helped us form teams, and identify projects, where the principles of these proven techniques could be applied. A few quick successes encouraged the members of the team to understand the benefits of Kaizen , and then they accelerated their journey. Today, after 3 years of this journey, we definitely feel that the steps that we took about 3 years ago have proven to be useful. We are proud to call ourselves a Lean Six Sigma & Kaizen company, and have had some significant achievements in various projects, that have helped us to offset the rising energy and overhead costs, and meet the targets given to us by our global customers.

The shop floor, today, has visual boards like Kanban boards, 6S score boards, and other visuals. This helps to monitor the processes through alerts and signals,  thereby ensuring the waste is minimised and enables the plant to go ‘Lean’.  Visual control is an important lean concept and I think that we have been quite rigorous in our implementation of these visual control systems throughout the factory.

Kaizen workshops are a regular activity now at Indo-MIM. There is a co-ordinator, who leads this initiative at both the plants. He, together with the operations team, identifies a few projects for focus of Kaizen, and then executes them, with a final presentation and display of the Kaizen after its implementation. The time line for this activity is one week, within which all the Kaizens are completed. This has now become the culture at Indo-MIM, which makes all the employees follow it as a routine in all their respective places of work. The team members are suitably rewarded, which helps to keep their morale high.

In fact, we have also sent our teams to various customer places in Kaizen competitions, and won awards. The common chord that runs throughout the company, starting from the top management to the operators at the shop floor, is the hunger to learn something new and remain a step ahead in the race. This is one of the main reasons how an organisation, like Indo-MIM, which is the youngest aerospace companies in India, is able to offer a combination of some unique services in India. Our aim is to be the pioneer in the industry to offer high precision aerospace machining.

How do these techniques practically support better manufacturing?
Kaizen Blitz reduces non-value added activities, which significantly reduce manpower costs. These techniques can also improve product quality which reduces Cost of Poor Quality (COPQ). Six Sigma can be a very powerful tool to increase process capability. Improved process capability reduces rework, scrap and customer complaints.

Tell us something about the group companies and your business configuration – domestic/exports?
Indo-MIM group has three main business groups: Metal Injection Molding (MIM), Investment Casting and Aerospace Product Group. Both MIM and Aerospace Product group are located at Bangalore, in India, whereas Investment Casting is located at Tirupati, which is about 250 kms from Bangalore.  The investment casting business was launched in 2009 under the name “Gowri Ventures”. India has been a favourable destination for the aviation industry and hence, availability of all these MIM capabilities under one umbrella is a benefit for the aviation customers who are setting up their plants or sourcing offices in India.

About Indo-MIM: Indo-MIM is the World’s largest MIM company. The company has two manufacturing plants at Bangalore, India, spread over 2,50,000 sq ft. With customers spread over more than 35 countries in almost every business segment, it has its sales offices at USA, Germany, China, and Taiwan. Further, it has sales representatives at various other important locations like Turkey, France, Italy, Czech Republic, Israel, Japan, Korea, and Singapore. The company has developed over 3,000 varieties of parts in all types of ferrous metals, as per customer drawings.

Gowri Ventures: It is the other group company of Indo-MIM that is engaged in manufacturing investment casting parts for its global customers. The very thought of putting up this plant, was envisaged owing to customer requests for supporting them with higher weight parts. With MIM technology, Indo-MIM was not able to meet the requirements of its global customers of 5 or 10 kilogram parts. This is when it was decided to put up a Greenfield project to manufacture precision investment castings.

The Aerospace Product Group: It is the recent launch of Indo-MIM. This group encompasses capabilities spread over precision machining as per aviation standards as well as surface treatment and painting capabilities.

Your focus industries…
We are focused on component manufacturing in automotive, medical and consumer applications. The MIM technology is very versatile and allows us to deal with parts across multiple segments.  The emphasis is on part complexity.  If the parts are complex, then there is potential for using the MIM application.

Role of R&D and new product developments…
Indo-MIM has an American technology enriched in India. We started as a Joint Venture (JV) with a large MIM company from USA. Later, the stake of this American company in the JV was taken over by the Indian counterpart. Hence, all the development had to be done here. In-house R&D has been one of our strongest assets. Young engineers have been at the forefront of the R&D and new product development initiatives. Indo-MIM manufactures its own feedstock in the in-house compounding section. This allows the customer to get tailor-made materials as per their requirements.

We have now added Ceramic Injection Molding and Titanium Injection Molding to our capabilities. With these addition, Indo-MIM becomes the single-stop solution provider for MIM, CIM, Ti-MIM, Investment Casting, Aerospace Precision Machining and Surface Treatments.

What are your views on the current market scenario?
Right now the global economy is very uncertain.  However, we are still witnessing decent demand in all regions.

Where do you see Indo-MIM five years down the line?
We are aiming for Rs 1,000 – 1,200 crore of turnover with a strong presence in medical and automotive segments. In the next five years, we expect Rs 200 crore to our topline from our Aero-space & Castings.

nishant@mfgtechupdate.com