B P Poddar, Sr. Vice President, FEMCO India shares the top three predictions for the manufacturing industry, the company’s growth statement, bestsellers and use cases.
FEMCO is more than 70 years old Machine Tool Manufacturing company founded in Taiwan. The company is known for manufacturing Machine Tools for various industry segments – Heavy Engineering, Oil & Gas and Aluminum Alloy Wheels. FEMCO realized the potential offered by the Indian industry and established the Indian company in the year 2011.
FEMCO’s products comprise – Horizontal Boring Machines, Horizontal Boring Machines with Integrated Facing Head & Automatic Tool Changer for Facing Head, Horizontal Lathe Machines, VTLs and Alloy Wheel Manufacturing Solutions.
Top Predictions
Additive Manufacturing
One of the biggest news in the manufacturing technology sector in the last few years is the proliferation and application of 3-D Printing. It has caught the imagination of the general public and the manufacturing fraternity.
Within a few years, the technology has advanced so much that it is now possible to produce almost any component using metal, plastic, mixed materials and even human tissue. It has forced engineers and designers to think very differently when thinking about product development, 3D Printing will change the face of manufacturing forever.
It gives you a lot more possibilities for how you design a part. For a certain category of products where you would normally need six pieces, 3-D printing can achieve the same thing in one piece without additional processes like welding or screwing.
Three-dimensional printing reduces waste by recycling plastic and cuts down on the wait time for replacement parts and transportation. Its implications for mass production are various, making advancements possible in products ranging from toys to medical devices.
Internet of Things (IoT)
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a revolutionary manufacturing technology that allows electronic devices connected to each other, within the existing Internet infrastructure, to communicate with one another without human intervention.
As such, the use of this technology is going to have a profound impact on the manufacturing industry. IoT enables connected devices to “talk” to each other, sending and receiving critical notifications. This type of small, but critical, application of IoT in manufacturing results in reduced downtime, increased quality, reduced waste and less overall costs.
Artificial Intelligence
The science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs is having a transformative impact on the industry.
AI is a way of making a computer, computer-controlled robot or a software think intelligently in a similar manner the intelligent humans think.
AI has been dominant in various fields such as:
- Gaming
- Natural Language Processing
- Expert Systems
- Vision Systems
- Speech Recognition
- Handwriting Recognition
- Intelligent Robots
- Self-Driving Cars/Drones
VISION 2023:
GROWTH STATEMENT
“FEMCO is more than 70 years old Machine Tool Manufacturing company that was founded in Taiwan. The company is known and highly respected for manufacturing Machine Tools for various industry segments – Heavy Engineering, Oil & Gas and Aluminum Alloy Wheels.
FEMCO realized the potential offered by Indian Industry and established own company in year -2011 with just 3 employees. In last seven years we have reached various milestones in our journey in Indian Market.
FEMCO product overviews comprises – Horizontal Boring Machines, Horizontal Boring Machines with Integrated Facing Head & Automatic Tool Changer for Facing Head, Horizontal Lathe Machines, VTLs and Alloy Wheel Manufacturing Solutions.
FEMCO is the first Taiwanese company to establish a Technology Center in India which is located at Pune. This Technology-cum-Demo Center is spread over 50,000 square feet.
Through this Technological Center, we are able to demonstrate our technical capabilities to our customers. We offer Test Cut trials to demanding customers.
We are not only offering standalone machines but complete solutions which includes pre-sales, application engineering support, installation and commissioning through well qualified and factory trained engineers, support through warrantee and after warrantee, timely spare parts availability.
After gaining a firm foothold in this market and understanding various industry segments and geographical regions, we have expanded our reach to various important industrial locations.
To meet various requirements of market and various industrial segments, we have joined hands with few other Taiwanese Machine Tool Makers and started marketing different machines such as VTL, Double Column Machining Centers, Grinding Machines, EDM and others.
Growth Statement
To be a partner of various industry segments where we and our customers arrive on most appropriate Technological solutions in order to meet global market requirements efficiently.
BESTSELLERS
Alloy Wheel Machining Solutions
Passenger Car Alloy Wheel Manufacturing offers very high potential and growth prospects over the coming few years. Approximately 18 percent cars are equipped with Alloy Wheels. In the near future almost 80 percent cars will come with Alloy wheels because of many engineering advantages. Some of them are Fuel Efficiency, Light Material, High Stiffness, Crash Worthiness, Quick Heat dissipation, Safety and Aesthetics.
FEMCO understood global potential growth of Alloy Wheel segment and started manufacturing machines more than 20 years ago. FEMCO is one of the largest machine tool makers for offering solutions to “Alloy Wheel Manufacturing Industry Segment “– Passenger Cars and Motorcycles. Until now we have supplied more than 2,500 machines all over the world.
We offer complete solutions – Machines, Clamping Systems, Engineering, Automation, Measuring, Cleaning, Laser Marking.
Under machining we can offer – Vertical Solutions or Horizontal Solutions. Vertical solutions include machines with Twin Turret or Single Turret.
We also offer SP Series machine solutions for Bright Machining. Our bright machines are designed with granite headstock for improved stability and better vibration dampening. We offer built-in spindle motor which eliminates noise and reduces vibrations
We take complete responsibility of designing appropriate machining solutions which not only includes machines but appropriate engineering solutions i.e. right selection of clamping systems, tooling selection, designing automation, optical measurement systems, AVM (Automatic Virtual Metrology) – unique solution offered by Femco. AVM is real time inspection system. This captures important quality parameters which needs to be controlled.
AVM offers various benefits. Few important among them are i.e. Data Collection, Data Analysis, Yield & Machine Status. This can be used for machine optimization.
Laser Marking machines engrave QR code on each machine which can store complete quality details of wheel which can be used to trace back the process, quality details of that particular wheel
We Offer Complete Solutions For Alloy Wheel Machining Of Passenger Cars & Motorcycles: Ready For Integration in Industry 4.0
Oil & Gas/Valve Industry Solutions
This industry segment is also on priority of Femco as this requires different cost-effective solutions. In Valve industries typical machining solutions adopted by industry are combinations of VTL and HMC. These solutions are less efficient and up times are very low as it calls for multiple set-ups which are time consuming.
FEMCO understood requirement of Valve Industry and developed HBM (Horizontal Boring Machine ) with integrated Facing Head ( U-Axis ). This configuration have 6-axes movements i.e. X,Y, Z, B, W & U.
This combination offers process flexibility of VTL & HMC on single machine. This is most appropriate solution for Boring, Milling Turing, Internal & External Taper Turing, Sphere Turning, ID & OD Grooving , Facing, etc. Main Spindle is having BT-50 Taper and U-Axis is having HSK-100 interface. We have different machine variants offering tool changing either for main spindle or for main spindle & U-Axis both depending on customer’s choices and requirements.
Our many machines are satisfactorily working in Oil & Gas and Valve industries with repeated business – this means that our customers’ quality and quantity requirements are met or exceeded in many cases.
CASE STUDY
We have provided many winning solutions in the Alloy Wheel Industry.
Many customers use machining solutions which are stand alone type with manual interventions for loading, unloading, wheel orientation, wheel cleaning, checking, etc.
We studied requirements of customers and we proposed and supplied them complete solution which included:
- Machining Solutions
- Robotic Automation
- Automatic Wheel Orientation
- Wheel Cleaning
- Hub Bore Measurement
- Laser Marking
- AVM –Automatic Virtual Measurement System – for measurement of about 10~15 different parameters.
This solution offered higher productivity, higher quality, higher uptime, improved OEE and less human intervention and manpower is reduced drastically. Our esteemed customers are going for multiple repeat orders for these solutions.