Indian sheet metal industry is attracting global players

By OEM Update Editorial February 10, 2020 11:25 am IST

Puneet Sharma, Country Head India, Salvagnini Machinery India Pvt. Ltd. talks about the new products the company launched at IMTEX 2020 and how the domestic sheet metal industry is growing due to government initiatives in several sectors.

Can you brief about the products that you have launched and showcased at IMTEX 2020?
Salvagnini panel bender is an automatic machine in every aspect, and as such is ideal for a modern smart factory.

We are happy to introduce our new Panel Bender PX at IMTEX this year at IMTEX. Key features of the PX include auto tool setup, kit production, every job can be of different thickness, MAC2.0 which provides material adaptability and lower power consumption.

This new machine, which runs on electric actuators, has reliability and repeatability. The PX is of course an adaptive machine, able to react and set itself up according to changes in bending conditions, for example according to the temperature or the ultimate tensile strength of the material being bent. This guarantees the precision, repeatability and quality of the finished product, resulting in zero waste and reduced downstream corrections.

What, according to you, is driving the sector at this moment?
India’s sheet metal market is growing at 20-25 percent which is majorly due to the present government’s initiatives for the development and investment in infrastructure, railways, green energy, telecom, and textile machinery. A lot of sheet metal importers from Europe and the US are shifting from China to India, which is again key for the Indian sheet metal industry to gear up with adaptive technologies.

How is Industry 4.0, AI, robotics helping the industry to increase the efficiency whilst maintaining cost competitiveness?
Salvagnini is the leader in automation, smart factory, Industry 4.0, and the production of flexible machinery and systems for sheet metal machining. We already are successfully running in 18 automated lines in India.

In India, we want to tap SMEs by helping them to adapt bending automation using the new PX panel bender, which can be integrated to a third-party robot for loading and unloading.

What kind of challenges and opportunities do you see in this sector? What measures are you taking in this regard?
The success of businesses is proportional to the ability to adapt quickly to new scenarios which are no longer foreseeable. We must therefore be flexible and resilient, and able to adapt to situations which we don’t know today. To do so, I think it is fundamental to choose the right way of manufacturing, where Salvagnini come in to play in giving solutions like Flex cell, FMS and new-generation bending technology to the Indian sheet metal industry.

What are your plans and projections for the next two years?
With my 25 years of experience in the Indian sheet metal industry, we wish to bring concepts of Industry 4.0 in India as it involves many aspects and concepts which, if not correctly applied, can thwart all the effort and investments made. Entrepreneurs will have to transform companies and manage changes more effectively and efficiently.

We want to bring more automation in bending technology so that we can move from conventional bending to automated panel benders.

Puneet Sharma,Country Head India,Salvagnini Machinery India Pvt. Ltd.