Optimistic about increased demand in India

June 9, 2021 12:40 pm

With the government’s amended FDI policies, we expect an uptick in the demand for industrial manipulators and material handling equipment in industries and factories.

Talking about the demand for industrial manipulators in India, Vidhan Bhandari, Country Manager, DALMEC Industrial Manipulators, in an interview with OEM Update, share his views and experiences on how the COVID scenario has enabled to be closer to their customers and meet their expectations.

Kindly walk us through your company’s profile and journey! (If you can add company’s flagship offerings and services)

The key idea behind the inception of Dalmec Industrial Manipulators was to create a safe, ergonomic and fatigue-free work environment. After World War II (around 1950s), the world was experiencing economic expansion. The Dallago family sensed this opportunity to start an entrepreneurial venture. Dalmec flagged off with humble beginning from a small craft laboratory but today, we have proud to be single largest state-of-the-art manufacturing facility for industrial manipulators in the world. All our warehouses are software managed. We have advanced laser technology to perform sheet metal cutting and fully automated robots to carry out welding processes.

In the early 90s, Dalmec sensed the pulse of the industry and started global expansions to serve existing clients in new regions and tap new markets. Currently, we are delivering products and services to customers in more than 45 countries.

Quality being a watchword, our factory is ISO 9001 certified; we are also ISO 1400 certified. Even the software “Prod 11” used for manipulator designing is certified by TÜV Nord.

How do you evaluate the demand for industrial manipulators in Indian industries?

Ever since we started expanding our reach to other continents and countries, India has always been an important market for Dalmec. Even the foreign countries have recognised the potentials of Indian workforce and our engineers. They are eager to learn and adopt technological transformations. Indian counterparts have proved their capacity to produce the best quality products that meet international standards.

In a way, India is a unique country because there is a presence of every industrial sector. Dalmec has catered material handling demands for all sectors, be it automotive, chemical, defence, electronics, foundry, glass, etc. So, we don’t have to rely on a handful of sectors to provide our products and services and this excites us to bring in more for our clients.

Recently, the government of India has made few announcements during the budget and thereafter that ensures enhancing the facilities for ease of doing business in India, and rolled out various initiatives and schemes to attract FDI in the manufacturing sector. This will definitely add impetus to India’s economic growth.

What are your offerings for the automotive, manufacturing and packaging sector?

Dalmec is a market leader and we pride to have worked with top manufacturing companies across the globe. The long industry presence and associations with market leaders provided us the opportunity to observe them and evolve ourselves to meet industry trends, process developments and changing client requirements.

Globally, we have a very strong foothold in Automobile sector. We have worked closely with luxury and passenger car, commercial and industrial vehicle manufacturers. Dalmec offers solutions in BIW pressline, sub-assemblies (axle, suspensions, and engine parts handling) and assembly lines (bonnet, sunroof, FEM, integrated panels, doors, windscreens, seats, wheels handling). Our manipulators are CE marked that meets EU standards of health, safety and environment. We also have a vast experience to work in harsh and explosive environment. We also provide ATEX certification for our manipulator typically used in chemical, foundries, and defence industry.

Which products are widely used for material handling across the industries?

Dalmec has a wide range of products consisting of rigid arms and cable type manipulator. All our manipulators are available in column mounted, fixed overhead and overhead running arrangement. The choice of mounting depends upon the customer preference, process requirement and floor space availability.

The rigid arm manipulator is used to handle complex profiles or heavy components typically weighing from 100 kg to 1.5 ton. Whereas, the cable type is suitable to lift components weighing between 6 kg to 220 kg with standard shapes.

Elaborate a bit more on COVID impact on Dalmec globally and Dalmec India plan to deal with it in Indian market?

Similar to other organisations, the pandemic has impacted our global business as well. However, we have good relations with our customers and their trust has helped us surf tough conditions.

This situation has provided us with an opportunity to work closely with our clients. Our service team is answering client calls round the clock to provide support. Even the field engineers are active to achieve 100 percent uptime of manipulator while streamlining their production activity. We also have maintained a well-stocked inventory of spare parts at our office to promptly serve them.

These are the unprecedented times and like any other organisation we too have our share challenges to overcome. However, the situation helped us to work closely with our clients. We are connecting with each and every client to check upon their requirements for health check-up, spare parts and AMCs.

Dalmec service team is working round the clock to provide on-call technical support. During production streamlining activities in our customer’s factory, our field engineers are actively present to achieve 100 percent uptime of the manipulator. Due to a well-maintained inventory of spare parts at our office, we are promptly serving our customer demands.

We expect a revival of economy and up stick in client’s demand for manipulators. The infrastructure projects are going strong across India; we anticipate that the road equipment manufacturers will continue with their investment plans. Last year, the tractor industry witnessed a robust growth and considering the monsoon forecast for this year, I believe this industry will continue its uptrend. The government has amended FDI policies to boost defense equipment manufacturing in India. We look forward to a rise in demand for material handling equipment in ordnance factories as well.

India is aspiring to grow economically; FDI policies and taxation structure are modified to facilitate smooth set up of manufacturing plant. In addition to this, the organisations have realised the importance of expanding geographic spread of their facilities rather than depending on a single country. We have a pool of skilled and semi-skilled workforce ready to learn and implement technology advancement. All these factors with bring positive development in India’s economy. Overall, we are optimistic about the future and equipped to support our clients!