Manufacturing Outsourcing: Manufactured Goods & Engineering Products
India has a strong and diversified industrial base for the production of engineering goods and services, with the term engineering goods being used as a catch-all for all of the following: ferrous and non-ferrous materials used for producing other products and components, components manufactured from such materials, intermediate products such as bearings, valves, pumps and compressors that go into the production of other engineering machinery and systems, and such engineering machinery and systems themselves.
India’s rising engineering exports include heavy engineering goods, transport equipment, capital goods, other machinery/equipment and light engineering products like castings, forgings and fasteners.
The major categories of engineering and manufactured goods being exported from India to North America and Europe included the following:
Metal (Ferrous and Non-Ferrous) Manufactured Parts. This category comprises parts such as pipes, fittings, flanges, sheets, wire, rods, lugs, coils, connectors, precision turned parts, nuts, bolts, screws, fasteners, deep drawn sheet metal components, pressed and stamped parts for electrical and automotive applications as well as a whole host of other similar parts. It also includes castings and forgings which are also listed as a separate category below.
Castings & Forgings. India manufactures and exports all kinds of castings and forgings for automotive, defense, material handling, earthmoving and electrical applications. There are over 300 companies that manufacture forged parts (excluding the large number of units classified as tiny) and forging capabilities exist for all kinds of carbon, alloy and stainless steels using open-die and closed-die processes. Of these, there are about 10 large units and about 100 mid-size units.
India is the fourth largest manufacturer of castings worldwide and its output has more than doubled in the last 10 years. There are 4,500 foundries and are clustered in some parts of the country. Capabilities exist for expendable mold castings including precision castings, and for non-expendable mold die casting. Castings produced span ferrous, non ferrous, aluminum alloy, graded cast iron, ductile iron, steel etc for application in automobiles, pumps, compressors & valves, diesel engines, and, sanitary pipes & fittings etc. Grey iron castings constitute about 70% of total castings produced.
Metal Valves. India today produces a wide variety of world-class products in the metal valve segment and is emerging as a large exporter. The valve industry is growing at 8 percent and exports are growing at over 10 per cent due to Indian manufacturers. Types of valves produce include high temperature valves, butterfly valves, globe valves, gate valves, high pressure valves, ball valves, needle valves, rotary valves, exhaust valves, valve seat inserts, valve guides, diaphragm valves, diaphragm valves and screwed bonnet needle valve. These valves are available in a wide variety of metals including bronze, gun metal, non-ferrous nickel alloys, cast titanium, copper, aluminum and stainless steel.
Pumps & Compressors. There are over 800 large, medium and small units producing pumps in India for sectors from agriculture, HVAC to nuclear power generation.
The Indian pump industry produces positive displacement pumps (such as rotary, piston, diaphragm, screw and gear), buoyancy pumps, impulse pumps (such as hydraulic ramp), velocity pumps (such as centrifugal, radial flow and axial flow) and gravity pumps among others. Pump and compressor applications range from hydraulic, sea-water, slurries, chromatography, solvents, alkalis, acids, sewage etc to industrial, domestic and agricultural applications.
General Purpose Machinery. India has a well developed machine tool industry that manufactures almost the entire range of metal-cutting and metal-forming machine tools. There are over 150 machine tool manufacturers in the “organized” sector and about 300 units in the small/ancillary sector. The top ten machine tool manufacturers produce approximately three-fourths of the total production of machine tools in India.
Apart from conventional machine tools and Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) machines, the Indian industry also has capabilities to produce special purpose machines, robotics, handling systems, and Total Productive Manufacturing (TPM) friendly machines.
