The machine builder stands unique with its assembly lines and testing solutions that allows to makes the components error free.
Text: Bhargav TS
Titan Automation Solutions, part of Titan Company that produces manufacturing machines, assembly lines and test rigs to industries like automotive, electrical and electronics, medical and healthcare stands unique with its assembly line solutions and testing solutions. The assembly line supplied by the company is also capable of doing end of line testing, where the customers could rest assure the quality, safety, reliability and durability of the product. The company is also working on a new concept to enhance the productivity by removing necessary bottlenecks.
Speaking to Auto Components India, M Venkatesan, Divisional Manager, Machine Building & Company, Titan Company said, “The automotive components pertaining to two-wheelers and passenger cars are assembled by our machines. Starter motors, alternators, window regulators, fuel pumps, cargo latches are some of the products handled by us. Usually a concept is conceived by us and soon after conceiving a concept, we take care of 3 requisites namely space, environmentally driven energy and reliability of the concept. The most successful companies across world run on machines manufactured by us,” proudly said Venkatesan.
Titan Automation is also working on a concept called ‘Need of the industry’ where this concept will help the end users to enhance their productivity by removing bottlenecks. “In this new concept the customers can look at the entire manufacturing line and by looking at the HMI panel they can get information like uptime of the machine, quality performance of the line, bottleneck instances and solutions to optimise the entire line. To record all these parameters we are working on a software, which is intelligent enough to connect all the data and very clear information system given to the management to act upon and improve the productivity. Since this solution is compatible, our existing customers can also avail this solution. We are planning to market this product in the next 1 year,” revealed Venkatesan.
M Venkatesan, Divisional Manager, Machine Building & Company, Titan Company
The company offers turnkey assembly line and testing solutions for OEMs and Tier 1 suppliers. They offer lean manufacturing cells, fully automatic assembly lines and semi-automatic assembly lines and test rigs. In the passenger cars close to 60% of the solutions are provided by Titan including turn key solutions, assembly lines and testing products. With the help of these machines, operations like engine assembly, gearbox assembly, starter motors, alternators, ECUs, exhaust gas regulators, windows regulators and wiper motors are made. Finally at the end of the line all these parameters of the components are tested as well. For almost all automotive products, especially two-wheelers and passenger cars, the company has supplied turnkey solutions and stands unique in the league.
The company is capable of supplying unmanned fully automatic solutions. Automation level varies from lean manufacturing to fully automatic assembly lines. “We use conveyor system, rotary transfer system with robot and without robot and we give traceability solutions too. Traceability at its fullest sense can sense any deviations in the components and addresses the same to the user beforehand.Our machines are capable of tracing components, which is achieved in the form of radio-frequency identification (RFID), 2D marking through laser and other labelling systems. This is becoming an important factor in all our machines. Normally we bifurcate fully automatic with lean manufacturing cells where-in in the former, the same product is applied and used with 10 different variants but in the latter, volumes are high with cycle time of the part being utilised less. In the former case, we use lean manufacturing though fully automation is possible but not economical and in the latter case we suggest fully automation,” opined Venkatesan.
The only difference between fully automatic and lean manufacturing is loading and unloading has to be manned in lean manufacturing and the other attributes like quality, control to name a few match with fully automatic standards. Through lean manufacturing cost could be cut down with manned operations in loading and unloading with the quality standards matched with global operations. The assembly and testing technology is developed by the company and diversified their know-how into automotive, electrical, medical and FMCG industries. The company has partnered with PLC manufacturers, camera and sensor manufacturers, robotic manufacturers and together they build a concept but the concept innovation credit goes to Titan.
In order to provide world class machines, Titan has a team of professionals, which is segmented into 3 teams including application engineers who is specialised in analysing the customer needs, the second team is the design engineers who does the architect of the machine, programming, developing and control engineering. The third one is the Centre of Excellence (CoE) team who are futuristic in their approach. The entire research and development team is close to 130 and have 15 members in CoE.
Speaking on the global standards and initiatives taken by Titan, Venkatesan expressed, “We work mostly with the global companies who are operating in India and through them we export our lines to global markets. When we get a project off the ground we embed with the global counterparts from the conception stage and in various instances we collaborate with them. We always want to be a step ahead than our competitors hence we take care of even nitty-gritties during the concept stage itself. Once we receive a project our first goal is how to reduce the footprint of the machines and we make sure it has to be two-third amongst competitors. Today everyone is talking about energy efficiency, so all our products come with LED lighting and we incorporate environmental friendly attributes and finally we look into how we can achieve higher productivity of the lines, these are all our major initiatives, which made ourselves as the preferred partner to most of the companies. On top of that we commit upfront on the reliability and effectiveness of the equipment. We also update performance factor, availability of machines without hindrance and we make sure that the products delivered match global standards.”
Currently, the company’s 80% of the revenue comes from the automotive sector, with maximum business coming from Tier-1 component manufacturers. The assembly line solutions provider also exports products to 14 countries and 25 customers across world. To name a few it supplies to Bosch and Continental to their global operations and it stands out in the market because of quality and reliability of the machines. The company is also very optimistic on advancing the emission norms as it calls for lot of investments by the component makers and OEMs. “If my customers are bringing products related to BS-VI emission norms, it creates lot of opportunities for machine builders. It demands for a lot of new equipments, therefore it will improve our growth,” concluded Venkatesan. ACI
