FIBRO makes debut at IMTEX

January 13, 2016 12:32 pm

Our participation will help us to understand the industry needs and accordingly we will take those parts to manufacture in-house so as to offer most competitive solution.
Vivek Nanivadekar, Executive Director, Fibro India Precision Products Pvt Ltd
  Metal forming industry in India is at nascent stage as compared to developed countries. The largest customer of metal forming industry is automobiles sector which is hardly 20 years old after the opening up economy in 1990. The infrastructure for metal forming such as raw material, machine tools and know-how for tool making, surface treatment, inspection etc. is under development. The large portion of critical tools and even finished components are being imported even today. The investment required for producing the sheet metal components is quite high.
“Plastic industry is progressing faster than metal forming for the simple reason as the investment required is relatively smaller. Plastic is replacing metal for small and medium components. Most of the OEMs prefer to import the critical tools or finished components like skin panels from their established overseas supplier which is quite faster than developing those tools or components in India,” informs Vivek Nanivadekar, Executive Director, Fibro India Precision Products Pvt Ltd.
Due to fierce competition the ‘Time To Market’ (TTM) for new model is getting shorter and shorter. For that matter the manufacturing cycle time of any tool in India is quite longer as compared to any other country like Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. One of the main reasons for this longer time is absence of standardisation in raw material, hardware etc. Despite, India is also exporting lot of sheet metal components as well as finished products to other countries.
Bright futureNow with ‘Make in India’ drive lot of investment is coming and the technological gap is narrowing. The prestigious brands like BMW, Mercedes Benz have already announced their investment programmes in India which would offer the opportunities to domestic manufacturers to upgrade their facilities.
“Next five years would be critical and important for domestic sheet metal forming industry. If we can transform India in to global manufacturing hub in next five years, then the entire world will throw the opportunities and the challenges. It is certainly not an easy task. Though we might surpass the GDP growth rate of China but in absolute terms the gap is too big. Our strengths are skilled manpower, domestic market demand but the weaknesses are too many like lack of infrastructure, bureaucracy, rising real estate costs, absence of standardisation, long lead time. We must learn the lessons from China. Nevertheless, I am quite hopeful about the bright future of the sheet metal forming industry, assures Nanivadekar.
FIBRO’s offeringsFIBRO India, a subsidiary of FIBRO GmbH is one of the pioneers in standard parts for sheet metal forming tools, products such as nitrogen gas springs, compression springs, oil less guide elements, different types of CAM units, lifting elements etc. required in metal forming. The use of gas springs enabled die designers to reduce the overall die sizes and helped to bring press cushioning function into the die.
“Currently we offer wide range of gas springs from 2 kg to 20 tonnes capacity and stroke lengths up to 300 mm. FIBRO Gas springs are designed, produced and tested according to Pressure Equipment Directive, PED 97/23/EC for a minimum of 2,000,000 full cycles. Also FIBRO Cam units are used extensively to combine tool operations thus to produce components efficiently, boasts Nanivadekar.
Nanivadekar informed that, today only large OEMs and the 1st tier vendors are using the standard parts available in the market like nitrogen gas springs and other guide elements. But the small tool makers are still far from this practise.
FIBRO India offers standard parts of German quality but at Indian price. Apart from standard parts FIBRO also manufactures rotary or indexing tables for automation as well as for metal cutting application since 1960.
IMTEX 2016This is the first time FIBRO would be participating in IMTEX Forming and Nanivadekar is sure the participation will help FIBRO to penetrate the sheet metal forming industry. At IMTEX, FIBRO will launch its New Wireless Pressure Monitoring systems (WPM system) for gas springs used in forming dies.
“Our participation will help us to understand the industry needs and accordingly we will take those parts to manufacture in-house so as to offer most competitive solution,” concludes Nanivadekar.