The ‘Make in India’ initiative to increase mobile phone manufacturing has opened up a huge market for component manufacturers like TDK in the country. In order to understand TDK’s activities in India, Sneha Ambastha from Electronics Bazaar spoke to N. Balakrishnan, MD, EPCOS India Pvt Ltd, a TDK group company.
EB: With respect to TDK’s product line, who is your target audience?
Addressing the right kind of audience is the first step for us. Our primary focus in India would be the design houses because they conceptualise an application, the products and their features, as well as the specifications to which they want to develop the finished product. Related components have to meet the criteria set and the whole design would be flawed if the right components are not used. So, to that extent, the primary audience would be the design houses. We are looking at R&D centres, too. If they know our capabilities, then we can work with them and offer what they need. We develop components to suit the criteria set as above through participation in the reference design or by joining hands in the design process.
EB: What is your take on the Make in India drive?
Even before PM Modi began promoting the Make in India concept, we at EPCOS India have been making in India for decades. This is a market that cannot be ignored. You must have your footprint here. And that is why we have established a solid manufacturing base here for products that, among others, serve the Indian markets for industrial electronics and renewable energy as well as for household appliances. Our parent firm, TDK Corporation also recognises that this country has high potential. For example, we also offer a broad portfolio of products that would support the growing manufacturing base for mobile phones in India. Our miniaturised SESUB modules that integrate semiconductors into the substrate and our wireless charging solutions are designed specifically for use in smartphones and wearables.
EB: What is your strategy for expansion in India?
Our next step will be to expand our facility at Nashik, in line with the Make in India concept. We do not look at it as just an ‘expansion plan in India’ but as part of our global expansion, because we consider our factories as global factories. The objective of our worldwide network of factories is to stay close to the customer. A customer in India or Asia is now serviced by a plant in the region, locally, but if the situation demands, we can service a demand from other plants located in other continents too. It is but natural for any factory to first support the local market, and to that extent we are looking at India, its growth strategy and the inherent demand from within the country.
EB: What are the major industries in India that a component manufacturer should focus on?
Among others, the mobile phone market and set-top boxes will be important drivers of the Indian electronics industry in the future. The other area would be automotive electronics, because the content of electronics in that domain is continuously increasing. The fourth area would be industrial electronics and energy. This sector will include the smart grid, which is being talked about a lot. But the smart grid still has some way to go; in its simplest form, it would mean an increase in demand for the electronic meters. Another promising area is LEDs, since the government of India has initiated a large programme in this sector.
EB: With so many components available in the market, what makes TDK’s products stand out?
The very fact that we have prospered in the market for 80 years with a huge global customer base and continuously increasing business volumes is a testimony that we have won the confidence of our customers. In India we have developed a strong and successful market presence with cutting-edge components made in India for industrial electronics, renewable energy and household appliances. The second factor here is trust. We like to win the trust of our customers through our honesty and service, which we have been doing and that’s how we have been able to sustain our customers. The company believes very strongly in the philosophy of ‘zero defect to the market’.
EB: How are you able to achieve ‘zero defect to the market’?
You may have heard about ‘monozukuri’, a Japanese reference to a particular way of manufacturing. This practice helps in achieving zero defects, which is very important to ensure customer satisfaction and retention. In order to satisfy customers, –we focus especially on quality, which is achieved through the way of manufacturing and by ensuring that products with zero defects go to the market. We do that by continuously looking at the material we use, the processes we follow, by checking if our machines are capable of doing what we want them to, and beyond all this, we check if our people are capable of managing all these things. We continuously keep on measuring and correcting our skills.
We also look at and measure the claims and the feedback that we receive from the market. All these measurements are monitored by our management at the board level, and we keep bringing in corrections and improvements. For this, we use methodologies, like sharing of good practices. We follow many tools that are available globally —some from within the TDK Group, and some prevalent good practices from within the industry.
EB: Considering the availability of manufacturing equipment at present, how far do you think India has moved towards components manufacturing?
One of the raw materials that we use for our film capacitors is a polypropylene film. It has a thickness that ranges from 4u to 12u and these are then coated with an ultra-thin metal layer. This metallised film is then slit and wound – a process that requires extreme precision and which we are performing with our state-of-art equipment. In India, however, there are no toolmakers that are currently capable of designing and making machines of global quality that can carry out these processes. So the manufacturing machinery built in our country is still far behind in terms of capability and robustness for such high technology applications.
EB: How much time will it take for start-ups in this segment to grow in India?
This is a very difficult question to answer as it will depend on the quality and quantity of resources deployed; but perhaps 10 to 15 years— supported mainly by the immense advancement in technology.
