The President and CEO of FANUC India Private Limited, Sonali Kulkarni says that though the company was limiting its participation in shows, the firm felt it was pertinent to corroborate its commitment to its patrons from the Chennai region by taking part in ACMEE 2012.
She told Auto Monitor in the newsletter, which was released on the second day: Even as we have news of the Indian economy going soft with political leadership unable to rise to the occasion, we are happy to note that our industry is full of optimism, albeit a weakened rupee, coupled with buregoning interest rate and rising input costs. What is more, all our customers are geared to achieve an estimated 30 percent growth in 2012-13, despite these major external handicaps. Furthermore, our firm's accumulated base in India is now 83,596 units with a market share of 79-83 percent. At this pace, we conservatively expect to cross 100,00T0 units by March next year".
Talking about taking part in the ACMEE 2012, she said: "The Chennai region represents our most intellectual, sophisticated and professional customer base across our territory. Even though, we limit our participation in shows, we felt it was pertinent to highlight our commitment to our patrons from Chennai region by participatin in this expo. Therefore, I am quite happy to say that this show would be the first launching pad for two very special product developments announced by FANUC Japan, as early as April this year".
Touching upon the development strategy, the great grand daughter of the Father of Nation, Mahatma Gandhi (Sonali is the daughter of Sumithra Kulkarni, daughter of Ramdas Gandhi) said: "Our firm pioneered CNC technology way back in 1956, when our founder developed the first commercial CNC for Makino Freis. Since then, we have contined to walk the narrow path in further refining the factory automation to set the standard for our industry. FANUC has firmly dedicated itself to continual product development. Moreover, one-third of our headcount has been working on R&D at Japan. The results of these initiatives are BiF Servo Motor and the ArcMateoi-A welding robot, which were recently unveiled globally in Japan".
Elaborating on the launches at ACMEE 2012, she pointed out: "We are launching cost performance Servo Motors for the maching tool Industry in the country, which is the BiF series. This is in addition to the existing range of the BiS and BiSc series. This range of Servo Motors allow machine manufacturers to select from a slew of three powerful options, even as they design economic machines for the cost conscious end user today. What is more, these motors still carry the same traditional FANUC reliability and performance, its failure rate in the country is under a bare minimum level of 0.02 per unit a month. Furthermore, this translates into a Mean Time Between Failire of around 50 months".
Speaking about welding robots, the official informed: "We are also introducing ArcMate 0i-A welding robot. Sensing the humungous demand for automating welding, more to do with India's burgeoning two-wheeler industry. We have developed this cost performance robot with state of the art features. We are optimistic that this robot will cater to 99 percent of the domestic market. Clearly, its reach has beeen pronounced to 1,437 mm, with a positioning accuracy of say, 80 u, thus doubling speed to 4m/s. As a result, the overall weight of the robot is a mere 110 kg".
While shedding light on the company's aggresive growth plans and the cumbersom process of finding the requisite operators, she added that the company had also developed a simple robot cell displaying loading and unloading of machine, with a speed of cycle times of five seconds.
Similarly, as with all its other robots, the new displays are also supported by FANUC India's unparalleled Robot System Engineering team, which handles turnkey solutions, and its after sales maintenance team, spread across 23 locations across the country.
While laying emphasis on the Chennai region, the company has also displayed its small VMC, which is demonstrated live as it cuts connecting rods. This machining is normally Special Purpose Machines. "However, our Robodrill is able to handle most of the accurate machining for this critical part by itself and still maintain high productivity. Our Wire cut Electric Discharge Machine is also being displayed, giving live demo of taper cutting in matched geared parts". Kulkarni added.
