- Kennady V Kaippally, Country Manager, Bonfiglioli India

In today’s competitive arena, equipment suppliers need to be more and more customer focussed, driving more customer-centric processes. Could you please share such initiatives with your organisation?
Customer remains at the centre of defining all our activities and it starts with understanding customer’s application and designing customised solutions, that consider the optimal performance requirements and deliver them in the most effective way.

A well-defined set of processes, guide us through the complete product life cycle.

Beginning with understanding the requirement, conceptualising the product, prototyping, testing, and industrialising, a customer-centric approach remains the cornerstone that defines these processes. These customer-centric processes have helped us to work closely with large OEMs who are leaders in their field and develop tailor-made solutions for their varied requirements.

Over the years, this has resulted in the development of a range of products, that are unmatched in the industry, helping us serve a diverse set of markets.

What are the plans for electrification of the offering by your organisation? What typical challenges do you think the industry would face if we have to move to complete electric offering for the customers?
It has been clear to us for quite some time that electrification will play a very important role in defining the drive trains of the future. This has been instrumental in our decision to develop a wide range of products for applications like a wheel, track, slew, drum, and various other drives, in which conventional drives have been replaced with electric motors. These businesses are gaining ground and we expect them to be engines of future growth.

In the short term, the biggest challenge the industry will face in moving towards complete electric offering remains technological, particularly when it comes to large production equipment. However, we are hopeful that the technology and infrastructure will evolve over a period to overcome these challenges and we intend to play an important part in this transformation.

Equipment monitoring and increased Human Machine Interface is a new Mantra in the high-end construction equipment industry.

How is your organisation coping with this demand for customers, and how ready are your products to meet this demand?
Equipment monitoring and human-machine interface are becoming important for matching the ever-growing performance expectations of customers. We have many solutions where electronic and hydraulic features are integrated into mechanical transmissions systems to provide an online feedback mechanism to equipment operators. One such solution is the integration of the load cell with the gearbox. This quickly and precisely measures torque and enables torque monitoring in real-time.

Connected via an external cable connection, the system provides an automatic engine shut­down to protect the drive or reduce the capacity of the frequency converter, while providing information to the PLC. In addition, the system also has an anti-seize function that prevents blockages. The evaluation of its data also facilitates predictive maintenance.

What efforts are being made to make your product more versatile and value for money for customers?
Our objective is to deliver a quality product, that delivers value for the customer over its lifetime. We make efforts to understand customer application, based on which an optimised product meeting the performance criteria of application, is defined.

Care is taken to ensure that the cost of ownership is minimised with innovations like lifetime lubricated grease that doesn’t require top-up or replacements. The high amount of localisation of our product also ensures ready availability of reasonably priced spares. All these measures ensure we deliver value for money for our customers.

With the heavy increase in the expenditure for infrastructure development in this country, how do you think you are going to utilise the opportunity? Are you planning to add more products in the future?
Please elaborate.
An increase in expenditure for infrastructure development is much desired in an infrastructure deficit country like ours. This expenditure is going to drive the growth in earthmoving, road building, concreating, and much other infrastructures-related equipment. This will provide enormous opportunities for component and aggregate suppliers like us, who with over two decades of presence in India have gained a deep understanding of this market.

We are prepared to fully utilise these growth opportunities and have expanded our facility at Thirumudivakkam, Chennai. The expanded facility houses modern assembly lines, R&D centre, and testing labs, all built with the highest standards of quality and safety, consistent with Bonfiglioli locations worldwide.

These expansions have enabled us to increase the production capacity and reduce lead time, helping us to better serve our customers.