Monday 30 April 2018

Determination An Elixir of Life


At just 21, he is the youngest among all the IMPALSIANS, but he is the most sought after team member too! He joined us as an intern three months ago but since then has made such a powerful impact with his work that surprised one and all.
Today we are highlighting the journey of our bright Graphic Design intern Aakarsh Raj.
He hails from Bokaro, in the state of Jharkhand, a 2 hours drive from Ranchi, home to one of India’s most successful captains Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Akarsh was the youngest member of the Raj family too, pampered and loved by two elder sisters. He completed his SSC from DAV Kathara and HSC from DAV Swang in the Science stream. He was an average student in school, and his true interest and talent were in drawing and painting from a very tender age even without formal training.
He was only 9 years old when he lost mother who passed away after prolonged illness. Like talent, tragedy doesn’t spare tender aged either, and this loss left a vacuum in his life forever. His sisters never let him feel the absence of their mother though, pampering and showering him with love to the utmost. However, this experience made him self-caring and taught him the lesson in responsibility.
For more information, Visit us: http://www.theimpals.com/rendezvous/Determination-An-Elixir-of-Life

Ashwa Riders Unleashing Potential in Go Kart Engineering


For Sahil Mohan Dhabale, Engineering warranted sportsman spirit and a never-say-die attitude to keep up his team’s spirit. After all, engineering was never just a stream of study for his own success; he realized it was a portal of India’s latent potential in an interesting engineering field, karting or race engineering.
As a captain should lead from the front, Sahil rightly led his team “Ashwa-Riders” to victory in one India’s prestigious go-kart events, Indian Kart Racing Championship 2018 after early setbacks couple of years ago.
This is a saga of an extraordinary achievement. A group of final year students of Bachelor of Engineering of St. Vincent Pallotti College of Engineering and Technology formed a motorsport team named “Ashwa-Riders” in 2015 to make Go-Kart.  
The ebullient team participated in National Kart Racing Championship in the same year. The team tried to be their best but ended up ranking 20th position, only to have Sahil and company brooding over how to improve the project.
Time had an opportune moment and chance for them in store and the patent was approved by the government of India recently. This rejuvenated the team as it was a big break for them.
For more information,Visit us: http://www.themachinemaker.com/younginnovator/Ashwa-Riders-Unleashing-Potential-in-Go-Kart-Engineering


The Daifuku Group has almost a century of experience in delivering systems for automotive production lines. Daifuku supplies automakers with automation and labor-saving systems that cover the entire production process from pressing, welding, painting, and assembly to part management, part supply, and engine testing. With cutting-edge distribution technologies and solutions that facilitate automotive production, Daifuku drives motorization across the globe by helping manufacturers produce vehicles for the global eco-car market and vehicles for specific domestic markets.



Solutions for Automotive Manufacturing

Pressing

For the pressing and plastic-molding processes, manufacturers can use Daifuku systems to transport steel, resin, and other materials, manage molded items in interim storage, and take other steps to achieve broader automation and make more effective use of labor resources. Daifuku, which boasts a solid reputation in systems for transporting and storing heavy loads, has the tools to create integrated systems that combine automatic guided vehicles, automated warehouses, and other material handling systems.

For more information,visit us: http://www.daifuku.com/in/solution/automotive/

Friday 27 April 2018

5 Mistakes SMEs Do in Marketing


Marketing makes or breaks a business, reason why big brands splurge on marketing on different platforms. However, just like every decision in business does not yield desired results, marketing too sometimes fail partly or out rightly. Big names or brands, can afford to forgo the wastage of time money in undesired results due to the cushion in budget. But small businesses or SMEs, in particular, do not get that cushion as they run short on time and resources and so there is little margin for error for SMEs.
This is not as much to say that SMEs should not think about using the power of marketing, they should know the right approach to marketing. Much as they need to know what to do in marketing, they should better know what not to do in marketing to avoid the common mistakes SMEs often commit.
If you are an owner of SME business or are mulling plans to start your own business, sooner or later, you should take note of these don’ts that will give your business the boost it needs to become a brand.
Read more at- http://www.theimpals.com/blogs/5-Mistakes-SMEs-Do-in-Marketing

Skill & Knowledge The Engines of Growth



Mahindra & Mahindra – Automotive Division has been time and again rated as one of the best manufacturing companies to work for. According to Mr. Vijay Kalra, this is a result of the engaging ecosystem that the Company creates for its employees. He says that a business cannot grow without the right people, for a manufacturing set up, success lies with a skilled workforce and world class automation.
In conversation with the Machine Maker, Mr. Vijay Kalra elaborately talks about the workforce and policies surrounding them. The zeal in his eyes and the zest in his words reflect his deep dedication for his work, great respect for his people, and the admiration for his company.
Ashok Leyland, MLS Claas India, DCM Toyota, Toyota Motor Corp., Daewoo motors Ltd. and General Motors
At Mahindra & Mahindra’s Automotive Division there are 20,000 blue-collar and 5,000 white-collar strong workforce. The firm has over 2 Lakh people working directly with Mahindra & Mahindra and these numbers will grow. The ‘Make in India’ mission will fuel these numbers not only in Mahindra but in all the Manufacturing Industries. Mr. Kalra is proud that at Mahindra, everyone is committed to imparting the required skills and providing the required capability building tools to all workforce as well as ensuring that at the work force at the Vendors / Supplier end is also at par with best practices, required skill set and overall empowered individuals.
Read more at- http://www.themachinemaker.com/machinemaker/Vijay-Kalra

Thursday 26 April 2018

5 Best Practices for Utilizing Your Warehouse to the Fullest



Indian manufacturing industry has witnessed the fast-paced advancement in past few decades and every manufacturer in the industry is participating and becoming a part of the journey. New tax policies i.e. GST has played a vital role in the manufacturing sector as well as in the development of the country by taking an initiative in the advancement of businesses.
Supply chain logistics has continuously changed and evolved, the warehousing sector has to advance at the same pace. The warehouse managers always faces the challenges of utilizing and optimizing the warehouse space. Warehousing plays a major role in any manufacturing industry and its costs are an account of cumulative costs of labour, inventory, finished goods, building, and land. Warehouses if not managed well are expensive to operate for the end companies.
To get the most out of the warehousing, a number of best practices can be opted to improve the productivity and overall process in the manufacturing facility. Although the best practices vary from industry to industry, there are some best practices from Daifuku-experts in material handling, warehousing and logistics management; which helps in utilizing the warehouse SPACE optimally and handle your products with care.
  • S - Scope for Expansion and Ease
  • P - Pace Up The Movement Of Units
  • A - Avoid Manual dependency
  • C - Carryout the Process in Flows
  • E – Escalate the Process
  • These elements will help you in utilizing and governing the process in the right direction. Each element is significant and complementary to each other. Implementing these practices can make an impact on your warehousing facility processes.
  • Scope for Expansion and Ease
  • With the faster pace of growth, there is also growth in land usage; this had lead to scarcity of land for horizontal expansion. This creates a desperate need of implementing the vertical warehousing, as the horizontal extension has huge investment associated with it. Vertical storage allows storing bulk items in a confined space and provides more space for store keeping units (SKU’s). To ensure the product stored in these vertical storages the automated systems are the simplest and advanced solution. The automated systems help you track down the items stored on regular basis and also favour the FIFO patterns. Maximizing space utilization can help with keeping inventory visible and easy to find.
  • Pace-up the Movement of Units
  • A plan should be such to allow free and fast movement of material in and out of the system without any loss or delays. The dispatch and receive movements should not contradict each other while in operations. Using the storage area with the optimal storing of items for the size (for example if a rack is designed for the units of 3*3 and is stored in the 2*2 unit, one has stored air in 1*1 area), if there is a fixed location for a specific bin one can free up space in the warehouse and company no longer pays for storing air around the items. Use specific containers like boxes, pallets, etc. for storing items which will help in utilizing the rack areas optimally.
  • Avoid Manual dependency
  • Once space is in optimal use, it is possible to elude manual dependency in the warehouses.  There are various irregularities in warehouses which are visible as well as hidden; the hidden irregularities cause more glitches than realized. One can avoid delays by ensuring the optimization of two elements equipment and personnel. Leveraging resources appropriately like utilizing time, labour, and manual functioning, as well as definite automated operations help to achieve the continual elimination of irregularities in the warehouse. The optimization of space utilization can prove helpful in ease of finding inventory, making it visible and avoiding unnecessary long travels times between the storage locations.
  • Carryout the Process in Flows
  • When a process is carried out in a warehouse there is a number of questions that should be asked; what are the volumes of units can be stored, what are the storing bin requirements for the units, what are the arrival and dispatch cycles of the units? One should carry out a proper analysis of the product before storing it. This will help in optimal usage of the stored area and the company can plan for storing other items in the warehouse for further usages and customer satisfaction. The analysis carried out should be based on the product flows in the warehouse, position of storage, the time duration of storage, tracking of the product storage. For carrying out such operations one can use automated storage and retrieving systems, tracking systems for the storage bins.
  • Escalate the Process
  • Following the four elements of SPACE, one can escalate their warehousing in a faster way which helps to achieve improved productivity for the companies. Automated systems help to minimize the errors in the systems caused in manual systems, helps to monitor the storing and retrieving levels to achieve significant growth in the efficiencies. Escalating the operations will lead in reusing the resources such as manpower in other operations as well the delays will be reduced and will bring customer satisfaction.
  • A final word
  • Optimized warehouse layout helps to achieve greater efficiencies, minimizes travel time, involves less manual dependency and helps to monitor the appropriate level of processes. Daifuku India helps to achieve the optimized space utilization of the warehouses in your manufacturing facility. Daifuku caters to a comprehensive range of products such as AS/RS-Unit Load AS/RS, Mini Load AS/RS, Racking Systems to its customers that meet their versatile needs in logistics and manufacturing. These systems increase productivity.
  • About Daifuku
  • Since 1937, Daifuku has been world-class Automated Materials Handling Company – conveying, storage, sorting, picking and controls. We have a global network of offices and subsidiaries that offer design, engineering, sales, installation and commissioning of an Automated Storage and Materials Handling System.
  • For more information, visit http://www.daifuku.com/in/

Innovation with Market Sense and Business Strategy is key to Success


The sheer thirst for knowledge and the proclivity to invent new equipment shaped Mr. Satish Pathak’s life. In a country where engineering and engineers are aplenty and following trends is a norm, he chose to be an innovator, a trendsetter in his own capacity. Right from his childhood, Satish was intensely curious with an inclination to devise new plans of doing things. Machine Maker brings you the incredible tale of a Trailblazer, Satish Pathak, Founder and Managing Director of Pune based Samiep Technology Innovations Private Limited.
Interesting and sometimes funny stories are testimony to his innovative mind right from locking himself up inside a wardrobe to figure out its door close mechanism, to making sword shield from water drum lid during childhood play fencing, to actually making a make-shift helmet for mining workers without even having the preemptive knowledge of existence of such a helmet in reality.     
This tendency to generate something new found him a conducive environment when he joined NRC. After completion of engineering studies, Satish joined the firm on a no-pay basis till his college results were declared. It was at NRC where his appetite for innovation received the right fodder. Satish’s immediate boss, Mr. A. S. Bhalode, was interested in R&D, which gave him the right platform.
Though his job role was restricted to maintenance of instrumentation and control, his enthusiasm propelled him to get involved in the repair of analog electronic process equipment at the component level, electro-pneumatic parts, and mechanical parts. His accountability for process control loops honed his abilities about debugging the control loops for all its elements such as sensors, instruments, transmitters, valves, and actuators and the interconnectivity down the line to rectifying a faulty IC, transistor, or some other electronic component. Satish got comprehensive knowledge ranging from sensor concepts to complete process control in a running plant. True to his naturality, he devised some electronic instruments right from a scratch to replace some pneumatic instruments that had become obsolete. In all this efforts Satish had a supportive boss in Mr. Bhalode during this phase.
For more information: http://www.themachinemaker.com/machinemaker/Satish-Pathak

Six Challenges Faced by Chemical Industries for measurement and control of level


Best-In-Class Level Measurement and Control Instruments by Pune Techtrol Owing To meticulously Engineered Instruments!
Continuous upgrading of environment & safety standards, stringent quality requirements of products and cost effective operationsare some of the varied and complex challenges that chemical industries have to deal with.To meet the ever-increasing demands of customers the chemical industries have to advancetechnologically to maintain lead in the market withreliable products. For implementation of advanced technology, one needs to have expert know-how of the instrumentation and automation market, to choose the proper instruments required for the level measurement of liquid and solid materials.
Pune Techtrol is the perfect companion offering acomprehensive range of products inlevel measurements and control instrumentsas well as expert know-howfor process automation. Chemical industries need accurate and reliable level measurement and control instruments to overcome following challenges normally encountered in their operations.
1. Corrosive liquids and environment
Handling of corrosive and aggressive liquids is inevitable in chemical industries. The chemicals needed to be handled may have strong acidic and strong alkaline properties. Very often corrosive fumes may be present in the storage tanks/vessels. Level measuring instruments installed on such storage tanks must be able to function accurately for long periods. Mechanisms of high and low-level monitoring, instruments must be able to sustain corrosive environments.Manual methods of monitoring level have a risk factor resulting into human injury.To assure the smooth functioning of processes, it is essential to design instruments with precision. The cutting-edge technology provided in Pune Techtrol instruments is highly precise.Measurement Technologies:
  • Various “Material of Construction (MOC)” of thelevelmeasuring instruments such as SS304/316/ PP/ PVDF, PTFE coated with SS are provided to suit the corrosive nature of chemicals.
  • Direct reading level gauges use stainless steel, PVDF, Teflon as MOC, particularly for corrosive and toxic chemicals.
2. Safety Norms and Regulations
Safety is a critical parameter inchemical industries. Some plants in chemical industries have inherent dangers because of the reactive chemicals stored in the tanks/vessels. Measurement and control operations in respect of such processes must have minimal human involvement and hence have to be automatic or remotely controlled. Some chemicals are flammable and can cause fire hazard.  To comply with safety requirements,Techtrolinstruments are designed to meet all the safety standards. Pune Techtrolhas wide range of approved,verified, certified and tested products thatmeet all the safety standards and environmental norms and regulations.
3. Materials having Different values of viscosity, specific gravity, dielectric constant
Values of viscosity,specific gravity, dielectric constant of materials whose levels are to be monitored are very important in design and selection of appropriate instruments for particular operation.Techtrol manufactures level measuring instruments based on various principles. While designing and manufacturing the instruments the precise values of these parameters must be available from the users. Accurate values of viscosity, specific gravity, dielectric constants in turn ensure accuracy and reliability of the level monitoring instruments.Measurement Technologies:
  • Float type switch are based on Archimedes principle where density is important.
  • In case of capacitance & radar type instruments, dielectric constant must be known.
4. High temperature & pressure conditions
In chemical industry there are endothermic and exothermic processes where high temperature & pressure conditions can occur. Working in such critical conditions, plant operators require accurate &reliable solutions for monitoring applications.In such varying temperature and pressure and the aggressive media, Techtrollevel measurements and control instrumentsare capable of working satisfactorily under such conditions
Measurement Technologies:
  • Appropriate selection of material with sufficient mechanical strength is ensured for the instruments subjected to conditions of high temperature and pressure.
  • Direct reading level gauges are tested for 1.5 times the operating pressure and certified by Inspectorate of Boilers wherever necessary.
5. Presence of fumes, dust and fire hazards
The tanks storing fly-ash haveextremely hot and dusty environment. Also, some chemicals/ materials can generate fumes which may lead to fire hazards in thechemical plant. When a fine dust suspended in air is ignited a dust explosion occurs which causes a very rapid burning and can injure people.The results of the instruments must be helpful to avoid the undesired conditions. The level instruments provided by Pune Techtrol come with a robustflameproof  housing and are designed to provide accurate results in extreme conditions.
Measurement Technologies:
  • For fuming liquids, seal pots are provided in FBG, FDG & FTG.
  • For hazardous applications instruments are provided with flame-proof & ATEX certified enclosures
  • Non-contact type instruments based on radarprinciple have antenna made up of PVDF material..
  • Selection between contact and non-contact type radar is done by taking into consideration the presence of dust/fumes and dielectric constants of the chemical materials.
  • Zener barriers are provided for isolation wherever required.
6. Improvement in Plant Efficiency
By virtue of their accuracy and reliability Techtrol level measuring instruments play vital role in improving operational efficiency of the plant. Techtrol uses modern technology to meet the challenge of continuous improvement in level measurement in turn helping the industry to improve product quality & efficiency. Following instruments are examples of such advanced technology.
  • Ultrasonic transmitters an guided wave radar
  • Radar type level transmitter using FMCW technology
  • Magnetostrictive transmitters
  • Displacer type transmitters
A final word
Pune Techtrol, a leading manufacturer in the field has set the benchmark by its precise and reliable instruments.The team of professional and skilled engineers of Pune Techtrol, who have expertise in theselection of the appropriate level measurement and control instruments, take into account various factors required and specified by the customers.
About The Author
Mr. C.N. Shukla, Training & Development Consultant, Pune Techtrol.
About Pune Techtrol
Pune Techtrol,a leader in designing and manufacturing the innovative Process Automation, Level measurement and Control instruments for liquids and solids. Used by many industries and professionals for more than three decades, Pune Techtrols’ quality equipment is trustedaround the globe.
For Information
Contact us at ho@punetechtrol.com
Visit us at www.punetechtrol.com