Eolane Bengaluru lays out a three year diversification and growth roadmap

February 21, 2015: Eolane is a leading French EMS company. With over 3500 employees and 25 subsidiaries across the globe, the company is ranked second in the European market and amongst the top 20 in the global scenario. Eolane offers complete one stop shop solutions to its customers. It specialises in eight major segments including industrial, consumer, telecommunications, aeronautics, defence, medical, automotive and railways

By Richa Chakravarty

In February 2013, Eolane acquired Finland-based Elcoteq SE and entered the Indian market. Set up in 2005 in India, Elcoteq had grown well in various segments, specifically telecommunications. Prior to being acquired by Eolane, it had also diversified into a few segments. After the acquisition, it has invested its efforts in the industrial and LED lighting segments, which are among the booming sectors in the country with a CAGR of more than 100 per cent. Eolane has done some segment specific investments like a complete optical evaluation laboratory (one of the very first set-up of this kind in India) for lighting projects as well as the reliability testing set-up for energy meter projects.

The roadmap for the future

After its entry into the India market, the company has already created a clear three year diversification roadmap and started developing competencies to cater to the new segments it plans to focus on, like defence, aerospace, energy and automotive. These segments require high technological and complex products. “Globally, Eolane brings with it 40 years of rich experience in eight strategic segments.” In India, too, we have upgraded our infrastructure in line with the requirements of these segments and invested in infrastructure like the flying probe tester, automatic conformal coating machines, etc. These are essential to cater to the requirements of low volume and high mix products,” informs Sukhvinder Kumar, managing director and CEO, Eolane.

Eolane is emerging as an EMS partner of choice for various national and multinational OEMs from diverse segments to support their domestic as well as export needs. “We are a right fit for customers looking for complex and high technology electronics manufacturing,” says Sukhvinder Kumar. The unique aspect about Eolane is its capability to handle low to high volumes in different business segments by understanding the sector-specific requirements and aligning its capabilities accordingly. It has the availability of EHTP and DTA business units, which helps it to support both the export and domestic requirements of its customers. In Bengaluru, Eolane has a state of the art manufacturing set-up that is complemented by a talented pool of professionals with rich industry experience who are ready to address all the challenges. The facility is fully ESD compliant, with temperature and humidity controlled areas.

Hurdles and obstacles faced

When Elcoteq began operations in India in 2005, the initial focus was restricted to just a few business segments, which offered limited growth and learning for its team of professionals. According to Sukhvinder Kumar, “There is always a risk if you are dependent on only a few particular sectors and a limited number of customers. Diversification is the key to sustain oneself and ensure continued excellent services to customers.” Hence, gradually, Eolane has started developing capabilities to cater to various other business segments and prepared itself for diversification into eight strategic segments.

Along with diversification, another important aspect that the company worked on was building up an environment that fostered innovation. “We are a learning organisation and we strongly believe in continuous improvement. We align all our efforts and energy in understanding our customers’ expectations and integrating them in our business processes,” says Sukhvinder Kumar. The company has developed a systematic and disciplined approach to manufacturing. Its innovation model includes practices like 5S, Kaizen, Poka-yoke, Six Sigma and lean manufacturing. There are regular contests and competitions held within the firm to strengthen this culture of innovation. Also, there is equal focus on QEHS (quality, environment, health and safety) for all the stakeholders.

Sustainability strategies

In line with the firm’s strategy to diversify and innovate, various upgrades are being planned in infrastructure as well as systems certifications.

Along with this, the company is committed to high ethical and quality standards in conducting business. “We are committed to continuously upgrade our competencies and infrastructure to stay ahead, in order to serve our customers. Eolane Bengaluru complies with various national and international standards of corporate social responsibility like SA8000, EICC, JAC, etc. We are also committed to run our business in a socially responsible manner to protect our customers’ brands and their IPR requirements,” informs Sukhvinder Kumar. The company has been identified as a green supplier by some of its European customers after having a third party assessment done on its CSR and quality aspects.

The company values its workforce tremendously and, hence, various initiatives are undertaken to motivate in-house talent and make it one of the best places to work in. “We consider people as our most important assets and we have been continuously strengthening our human capital readiness (HCR) model. This is an excellent system to continuously track and monitor the required versus actual competence at different levels within our company. A big focus is to improve human resource development by providing in-house as well as external training, and initiate external benchmarking within the 25+ subsidiaries in Eolane’s global network,” adds Sukhvinder Kumar.

The company strongly believes that all its decisions ought to be made in line with its six values or operating principals, which are listed below:

• The customer comes first

• Respect and invest in the development of people

• Keep to commitments

• Ensure excellence even in the small details

• Cut waste

• Build a results driven culture

• Infrastructure

The company has state of the art infrastructure required for high technology EMS, along with a well established management team and process excellence model. Eolane Bengaluru focuses on resource development and the upgrades are planned at regular intervals, keeping the customers’ requirements and market trends in mind.

The manufacturing unit at Bengaluru is spread over 13,500sqm with two dedicated units (for EHTP and DTA) within the same campus to cater to both the export and domestic needs of its customers. It has five SMA lines with a capacity of 500K CPH (components per hour). To complement this SMA capability, it has axial and radial platforms with wave soldering for the PTH technology. On the inspection and testing front, the company has AOI (auto optical inspection) machines from Orbotech, x-ray machines (Phoenix), flying probes (Takaya) and in-circuit testers (Teradyne) in place. It also has well equipped assembly lines with routers, press fit machines, automated plotting machines, and automatic conformal coating machines with various manual and semi automatic solutions designed for specific projects. Eolane Bengaluru is certified for ISO 9001, ISO 14001, OHSAS 18001 and AS 9100 C standards.

Awards and accolades

Having catered to the industry for many years and backed by the legacy of 40 years, Eolane enjoys a reputation as a high quality partner for all its customers across the globe. Elcoteq, the company it acquired, had also received a number of prestigious awards and recognition in the past. For two consecutive years, the company bagged the ELCINA–D&B Award, receiving the first prize at the country level for ‘Excellence in Environment Management’ in 2007-2008 and in 2008-2009. In the same year, it bagged a ‘Certificate of Excellence in Electronic Hardware Exports’ from STPI Karnataka. It also won an EFY Award for ‘Business Excellence’ in 2009-2010.

The company has also received a number of awards at various national and international contests organised by QCFI (Quality Circle Forum of India). Recently, one of its project teams, called the ‘Blue Stars’, won a second prize in a contest on quality improvements organised in Sri Lanka.

Expansion plans

Eolane is already in expansion mode. The company is planning to add to its current strength of 500 people in India. “We are ready for further investments in our targeted segments. By 2017, we plan to start our design centre in India to support the design needs of our customers. We expect very good growth in the coming years and are preparing ourselves for it,” informs Sukhvinder Kumar.