Tushar Mehendale, Managing Director, ElectroMech Material Handling Systems (India) Pvt Ltd, on the company and its activities.

Established in 1979, ElectroMech is India's largest EOT cranes manufacturer by value and volume. ElectroMech offers precise solutions for wide-ranging applications in manufacturing plants and infrastructure projects through a complete range of Hoists and Cranes. ElectroMech's plant in Pune is the largest EOT crane manufacturing facility in India practicing international standards of engineering and quality assurance.

ElectroMech is known for ensuring service excellence through a widespread network of sales offices across India. The company has a significant presence both in India and overseas.

As the providers of material handling solutions to key industries, ElectroMech has been at the forefront when it comes to changing trends in the segment. We believe that the shop floor is the backbone of any manufacturing enterprise. Over the years, we have supplied solutions for evolving needs of companies in various sectors to meet their changing shop floors requirements.

Modernisation of the shop floor

Over the years, the manufacturers across the sectors have realized the importance of adapting if not overhauling their production processes to meet the international standards of production. This realization has been brought about by the competitive efficiencies that a modern shop floor offers. Even in India, we have been witnessing a tremendous willingness to change these systems. However this demand is not something that can be addressed by 'one size fits all' approach. As the processes are modernized, they also become highly customized.

Increasing need for customisation

One such example would be our solutions provided to Thermax TBW. At the plant, 34 ElectroMech cranes with capacities ranging from 10 MT to 50 MT integrate the entire handling operations on three shop floors. This covers handling right from raw material storage to the final despatch, including several fabrication and assembly stations. The interesting part of this entire project was the involvement of ElectroMech right from the project conception and designing stage of the plant building. This helped us provide customised solutions for right from the planning stage. We were able to give suggestions so that the structural engineer could optimise the factory building based on the wheel loads and crane dimensions provided by us. It also allowed us to provide inputs on the workflow, so as to optimise the choice of cranes to keep costs low while achieving maximum resource utilisation.

The important aspect here is that we have always looked at material handling solutions as more than just providing the hardware. The Thermax TBW experience shows our commitment to make the entire material handling process more economical, seamless and up to date in terms of the technology used so that it can address even the future needs of our clients.

The complexity and the need for improved efficiency cannot be stressed enough when it comes to material handling requirements for automobile companies. We have been seeing a dramatic improvement in the needs of the automotive industry over the years.

ElectroMech has supplied equipments to Bajaj Auto for their shop floor. As Bajaj Auto approached ElectroMech to design a handling system for the press shop of its new four wheeler division. The challenge was to design a handling solution that allowed optimum space utilisation by covering the maximum possible shop floor area of both bays. Another critical requirement of the solution to be offered was one that is common across almost every heavy-duty press shop - die tilting. This is required for ease of loading/unloading and maintenance of dies. Bajaj Auto expected our cranes to be sufficiently equipped to address this requirement as well while also accounting for any needs that arise in the future.

Working in close association with the key decision makers, Electromech was able to address all the demands made by them.

Safety as a primary concern:

As we move towards modernization of the production systems, the primary concern for shop floor innovations is the safety of material and men. This can be explained by some of the steps we have taken on our shop floor. One such example is the implementation of a vertical storage rack system with a plate handler for steel plates. Prior to this, the company had plates of various thicknesses and specifications stacked horizontally, which led to higher floor space occupation. The revised system allows the company to conserve floor space and store an adequate quantity of plate material close to the location for its next use (i.e. CNC machine). Moreover, using a magnetic plate handler ensures safety for workers on the shop floor.

Apart from the plate storage and retrieval system, a number of activities have been introduced at ElectroMech to ensure safe working and improved productivity. Some of the initiatives have been detailed below:

• Complete fabrication of plates only on CNC machines. Hand-held gas cutting torches are totally eliminated
• Unique system of handling material in stores with a Stacker Crane
• Streamlined method of working. Raw material to Fabrication to Sub-assembly to Crane Assembly including electrical follows an assembly line-like process
• Paint Booth with most modern design of 400 square meter area. System to capture fine and heavy paint particles in full compliance to the MPCB norms is in place
• Use of Scissor Lift for transfer of heavy items at the level difference point between shop floors. With this arrangement, safety aspect of machinery and personnel transfer has improved drastically, and

Different types of cranes are installed in factory for internal handling. This is one of the special ways of understanding the difficulties of each model and also to demonstrate the application of each type.

Conclusion

The economics of manufacturing will keep up the pressure on companies to innovate and adapt the systems and processes to attain optimum output. As the need for modernization and improvement is felt largely across the board we will also witness the need for specific, tailor-made solutions. At ElectroMech we have already witnessed the trend with new projects and our solutions approach has resulted in not only meeting these requirements but also the demands that the may arise in the future.