— B. Sarang,
Managing Director, Asahi Switchgear Products Ltd
Asahi Switchgear Products Ltd, based in Hyderabad, is a joint
venture between Japan-based Hirose Co. and domestic Asa Banu
Group. Asahi offers a complete range of customized low and
medium voltage switchgear catering to several industries.
B. Sarang
discusses how this Indo-Japanese collaboration is harnessing the
individual capabilities of the two partners in creating quality
switchgear solutions that exceed customer expectations on all
fronts-quality, design, maintainability and cost. An interview by
Venugopal Pillai.
Tell us about the synergy derived by Asahi Switchgear Products
from its two promoters—Asa Bhanu Group, and Hirose
Company of Japan.
The whole idea and concept of Asahi Switchgear started with a
casual meeting in Japan between the President of Asa Bhanu
Group and Hirose. This meeting came into place as the founder
of Hirose and the Founder President of Asa Bhanu have a long
relationship in working together in other areas.
Immediately after the meeting, both companies felt like there
was a synergy and with both companies working together they
can bring high quality switchgear panels to India.
Hirose is a company that has excelled in manufacturing of
switchgear panels for the past 40 years and has been supplying
panels to various big names in Japan with the highest level of
quality and commitment. Their designs revolve around quality,
ease of use, safety and maintenance. They have over the years
made several leaps in making their systems smaller, safer and
more aesthetically pleasing to give the users maximum benefit
without a significant impact in the cost.
Asa Bhanu is an electrical engineering company that has
been designing and procuring electrical substations, their
equipment and switchgear systems for the past 15 years and
has been supplying their designs and equipments procures in
India to various International companies. Asa Bhanu's
strength lies in design, complete supply chain management
and thorough knowledge about the electrical business and
suppliers in India.
With the two companies working together, it seemed like a
complete synergy with both companies having perfect strength
and complementing each other.
Asahi Switchgear is a company that commits itself on
manufacturing high quality switchgear while exceeding the
customer requirements in terms of quality, design, maintainability
and cost.
With the two parent companies providing us the necessary
support, infrastructure and the necessary know-how, we are
very confident we will be able to reach and exceed the
expectations of our group companies.
What are the various types of electrical control panels produced
by ASPL?
Asahi switchgear is currently manufacturing various
panels of various requirements. Our goal for this
financial year is to break into each of the main industries,
namely, power generation & distribution utilities,
constructors, solar power plants, industries, and
commercial buildings.
To suit these requirements, we have along with technical
support from Hirose designed and supplied to most of the
sectors that we have targeted.
Our main supply is: 415V distribution panel boards; control &
relay panels for transformers; MCC & PCC panel boards;
6.6/3.3kV single/multi- VCB/vacuum contactor panel boards;
11kV single/multi VCB panel boards & KISOK; 33kV single/multi
VCB Panel Boards & KIOSK.
Discuss the advantage enjoyed by ASPL in using ABB switchgear
in its medium-voltage distribution panels.
Asahi Switchgear aims to provide the best quality products
possible for its customers, and it was after a tremendous
amount of internal debate decided to go with ABB. The obvious
reason for using ABB is the brand name and the respect that
ABB breaker has in the Indian market. We felt that with the ABB
breaker, we can concentrate on our panel design without
worrying too much about the breakers, especially with this
being our first entry in to the Indian market.
To add to this, ABB has tremendous reach in terms of this
service, and has a very good presence in India. With ABB we felt
that we have an excellent and reliable partner, wherein we can
concentrate on areas where in we need to provide high quality.
Tell us about your Hyderabad facility in terms of its design and
fabrication capabilities.
Asahi is a new company and at the moment we are
concentrating on manufacturing and assembling the best
quality of panels in the best environment possible and with the
best technique possible. Our commitment to quality can be
witnessed from the second anybody enters our factory.
Our facility has approximately 15,000 sqft with the possibility
to expand further by 50 per cent. Our factory is based on safety,
5S and cleanliness.
We believe that in order for us to manufacture the
switchgear that we promise to our customers we have to keep
our factory employees safe and give them an environment that
they are happy and proud to work in. We believe that we have
achieved this with our factory. We care for the nature and are
doing every thing to see that we are nature friendly to save
water and plant trees.
We emulate wherever we can the high standard of the
Japanese factories, while customizing various items to make it
most suitable for the Indian workers and systems.
In addition to this Asahi has all the basic requirements
necessary for the assembly for the panel within the factory, like
a 5T crane, HT testing kit, etc.
What is unique about our facility is our channel base, and
our use of only Japanese torque wrenches and crimping tools.
In Japan they treat that most vital aspects in the assembly
work of panels are considered to be crimping and application
of bolt tightening torque. If these two activities are done
properly the panel will be functioning reliably over its life of 35
plus years well.
Keeping this in mind we have decided to use only tested and
approved Japanese Torque wrenches and Crimping tools and
trained our staff by Japanese staff. We have a Japanese
director looking after production and design. The mechanical
design is also given a great importance. Design helps in
simplification and speed of the production.
The remaining important aspects are painting and fabrication
of panels. It is our plan to establish these facilities by the end of
this financial year.
Currently, in order to maintain the quality and delivery of
the panels to us we station our QC engineers at the site of the
fabricators so as to make sure that the quality of the panels
we want and need while maintaining the best relationship
with our vendors.
Given that India is witnessing significant investment in the
power sector, how do you gauge the demand for electrical
control panels in the years to come? Do you have plans to
expand your Hyderabad facility?
As I said, we plan to expand our factory so as to have our own
painting facility and fabrication facility. We hope that all this
will happen by the end of this financial year.
At the moment, we have a plan to manufacture up to 50 panels
a month depending on the size. However we have a facility that
can seamlessly be expanded to make up to 100 panels per
month. With an adjoining place for expanding the present
factory which is completely built up and ready for deployment as
soon as the need to produce more emerges.
Please elaborate on your R&D set-up and how ASPL works
towards creating better electrical control panels in terms of
design and material.
Asahi plans to be a premier supplier for Switchgear panels on
the same lines as the major players in India.
Our target and our aim is to manufacture the best system
possible. In this endeavor we are currently designing, several
panels to give us the edge in term of technology, performance
and safety.
We are currently designing the following systems:
- 33kV indoor switchgear
- 11kV internal Arc test compliant system
- Unitized substations for solar power plants
- Unitized substations for medium voltage installations for
buildings and factories
- Manufacturing techniques to reduce the cost and give a
better factory production rate
- Design of busbars, and other areas to make the system more
efficient electrically
For the MV substations discussed above, we have built a very
small and safe unitized substation for our factory. The
substation is smaller and safer than the traditional substations
in factories. We are fine tuning this system to make it more
aesthetical and then start supplying the same to the market.
For our second phase Asahi may start the research into
making our LT breakers in the near future.
Which industrial segments will be your key demand drivers in
the medium term?
We believe for the next two years we will be concentrating on
industries, large buildings and power plants such as thermal,
hydro and solar.
The reason is that we believe that these markets are more
quality driven markets. We would like to associate with them
and demonstrate our over all capability in manufacturing high
quality systems.
Pharmaceuticals, cement, and other plants depend heavily on
power and the quality and performance of the switchgear is
fundamental to the success of the factory therefore these are
areas where we feel that we can demonstrate our quality and
showcase our strengths.
Similarly solar and other IPP sectors are areas where
quality is most important as the ability to evacuate power
reliably will determine the viability of the plant and therefore a
high quality system is fundamental and is an absolute
requirement for the same.
Please elaborate on how you work in close association with your
clients to create customized control panels.
Asahi is a company formed by two companies that are
completely customer oriented due to the customers and the
culture of the companies. While Hirose is a Japanese company,
Asa Bhanu is a company that models around the Japanese
business ethics and concentrates tremendously on the business
in which they work with reputed Japanese companies.
Our customer oriented approach works right from the
beginning. Asahi being a new company we believe that it is more
important to demonstrate more proactively our focus on
enjoying a strong customer relationship.
During the enquiry stage we meet the customer with our design
team to clearly identify the suitable system, provide a certain
level of comfort to them by virtue of our strong hold in the
electrical systems. We normally design the system along with the
customer by suggesting them the alternative and superior ways
to improve the system design and also if need be provide
documentation for the end user. We strongly believe that our
initial interactions and our commitment to mutually improve the
system gives the customer a certain value addition that several
other local vendors cannot. We customize and provide a very
effective solution to meet the customer requirements.
Once the order is finalized we provide we manufacture the
system as per the agreed design. We provide on a continuous
basis updates on the manufacturing schedule so that the
customer is aware and can be assured that the product will be
delivered at the agreed time with the right quality and at the
agreed cost.
Asahi concentrates on the quality, delivery and cost. We
believe that these are the critical areas that the customer is
most impacted. If we are able to exceed the customer
expectation in these areas we believe that we would be the
preferred vendor for the switchgear system.
Does India face competition from China in the switchgear and
electric control panel market?
Like in all other systems and equipments if there is another
company in India or other country, like China that can provide
better systems with better quality, costs and delivery time,
there will surely be a threat.
However our policy in Asahi is to not think about our threats
and outside influence. We would like to concentrate on what we
can do and what we need to do to continuously improve our cost
and production speed.
We do not want to compromise quality or delivery for costs. I
believe that while there may be sections of the Indian market
that will be cost driven we strongly believe that in a few years
from now, we are confident that it will be a quality driven
market. We expect that the Indian market is maturing to exhibit
the right amount of concern for quality and reliability.
What is your view on price-competition generated by small
players in the unorganized sector? Do you think that the
consumer is sufficiently conscious of quality or is he pricesensitive?
There are two ways to think about this. We believe that quality
comes at a price, but at the same time, if we are not able to
convince the customer of our quality and its utility then they will
not be prepared to pay the price beyond the minimum that came
to his attention.
Asahi will firstly target the market that needs a certain level
of quality, design capability, needs and appreciates
certifications etc. We believe that the market is evidently
growing in this sector and is becoming more and more quality
conscious. Having said that quality shall still be at a reasonable
price, and we think the pursuit of our company is to try to meet
the right balance of the two.
Please summarize your growth plans for Asahi Switchgear and
your vision for the company (say) five years hence.
Our company would like to as stated above first provide panels
to all the major industrial sectors in the Indian market. Our first
target this year is to increase our presence in the Indian market.
Over the next couple of years, say by 2015, Asahi plans to be
one of the premier panel manufacturing companies in India with
a complete capability for fabrication, painting, assembly,
welding, and all necessary certifications for quality.
We have started in this direction very well and we hope that
we are able to improve further, continuously exceeding the
customer's expectation.