— Suneel Kapoor, General Manager,
Industrial Group India, Fluke
A wholly-owned subsidiary of
Danaher Corporation, Fluke is a
multinational corporation headquartered in Everett, Washington,
USA. Founded in 1948, Fluke has been empowering industries with
testing and troubleshooting capabilities to manufacturing and
service industries. In an exclusive interaction with Electrical
Monitor,
Suneel Kapoor discusses Fluke's growth in India. With
massive investment outlays in the power sector, Fluke is very
upbeat of its prospects in the subcontinent. Kapoor is also
optimistic about greater deployment of T&M equipment thanks to
growing private participation in the power sector.
At the outset, please tell us in brief on how Fluke has grown
since its inception in the late 1940s.
Since its founding in 1948, Fluke has helped define and grow a
unique technology market, providing testing and
troubleshooting capabilities that have grown to mission critical
status in manufacturing and service industries. Every new
manufacturing plant, office, hospital, or facility built today
represents another potential customer for Fluke products.
From industrial electronic installation, maintenance and
service, to precision measurement and quality control, Fluke
tools help keep business and industry around the globe up and
running. Typical customers and users include technicians,
engineers, metrologists, medical-device manufacturers, and
computer network professionals—people who stake their
reputations on their tools, and use tools to help extend their
personal power and abilities.
Fluke has achieved the number one or number two position in
every market in which it competes. The Fluke brand has a
reputation for portability, ruggedness, safety, ease of use and
rigid standards of quality.
Tell us about your range of equipment.
Traditionally Fluke was known as the best quality multimeter
manufacturer company but we have a wide range of electrical,
mechanical, process testing and calibration tools. We started
with portable test instruments and now we manufacture high
quality bench instruments which are used by various calibration
labs across the globe.
Fluke has a wide range of portable and handheld digital
multimeters, high precision reference bench instruments, high
precision power analyzers, cable testers, signal sources like
function generators, RCL meters, TV generators, calibration
equipments like multifunction calibrator, temperature calibrators,
pressurements dead-weight testers, RUSKA pressure calibrators,
electrical test tools, clamp meters, data acquisition instruments,
earth ground testers, HVAC/IAQ tools, insulation testers, laser
distance meters, process quality tools, process calibration tools,
scope meters, thermometers and IR windows.
Fluke has a wide range of thermal cameras which are rugged,
accurate and fit for industrial use. Recently Fluke also ventured
into portable vibration monitoring field and introduced a state-ofart
vibration tester with auto diagnostic and advisory capability.
What are your key products for the power sector?
The power utility industry is a demanding and often dangerous
environment. As a professional, one needs to know his test tools
provide accurate and consistent information.
Fluke tools are built to the highest safety and reliability
standards. Whether you are working in power generation,
transmission, distribution, calibration or installation, Fluke has
solutions center for you.
Key products for the power sector
include Fluke 381 Remote Display True-
RMS AC/DC Clamp Meter with iFlex;
Fluke 37x Clamp Meter Series; Fluke
Ti55 IR FlexCam Thermal Imager; Fluke
1625 Earth Ground Tester; Fluke
1555/1550C Insulation Resistance
Testers; Fluke 1740 Series 3-Phase
Power Quality Loggers; Fluke 576 IR
Thermometer
Tools from Fluke cover cater to entire
team ranging from the utility lineman, meter man, substation
technician, calibration technician, power generation technician to
customer service personnel.
We understand that Fluke currently distributes its products
through channel partners in India. Does Fluke have plans to
start manufacturing in the subcontinent?
Well, Fluke's current focus in India is the commitment to Fluke
users by overdriving investment in making the product
available, developing teams to work with customers to
understand unique needs and behavior in particular priority
attributes and deliver; and bringing global best practices of
maintenance.
What do you perceive as major demand
drivers for Fluke in India with respect to
the power sector?
Fluke looks at the power sector in four
primary ways—generation,
transmission, distribution and electrical
equipment manufacturing.
Generation and electrical equipment
manufacturing have been traditional
investors around best maintenance
practices and thus remain to be our
major customer and learning ground.
Transmission & distribution being built up phenomenally are
bringing needs of maintaining these networks and also need
for quality power and for decreasing transmission losses. All
these bring needs of efficient measuring devices where we
assist our customers.
India is growing at the rate of nearly 8 per cent and we
envisage the growth at around 8-10 per cent in coming years. To sustain such a high growth rate we need huge amount of
power. In current five year plan till 2012 the power
generation target has been around 62,000 mw. If we achieve
this still the peak power deficit would be around 6.5 per cent.
The rise in power generation will require investment in power
evacuation sector also. Apart from CTU, STU, this segment
has been opened for private investment also. Like power
generation, private participation will increase in the T&D
segment too.
India, the third largest economy in Asia, is planning to
invest $1.5 trillion in its infrastructure till 2017. A major
chunk of this investment is in power sector. New power
generation plants and T&D utilities will require state-of-art
diagnostic, calibration, test & measurement instruments.
Moreover the increased emphasis on efficiency, safety and
performance will result into a lot of investment in the T&M
market segment.
Fluke is known for supplying highly specialized T&M equipment.
What have been recent offerings for the Indian power market?
Fluke has been completing its offerings around high quality
accurate, rugged and reliable equipment on one side, and
calibration equipment on the other side. As our customer, we
have been moving from reactive to predictive maintenance. Our
general purpose maintenance offerings are being added with
condition monitoring product lines.
Further, as discussed earlier, along with high quality portable
hand held instruments we are having a wide variety of bench top
instruments which are not only used in routine maintenance but
also at calibration labs where greater amount of accuracy and
reliability is required. Recently we have launched state of art
multifunction calibrators with high accuracy and option to
calibrate various process and electrical parameters. New
advanced power quality analyzer with data logging facility has
been launched to address the power quality needs of the
customers. We are constantly investing in R&D and have
launched rugged accurate thermal imagers which are 2-metre
drop-tested. One of our pioneering launches has been the
advanced vibration tester which has auto diagnostic and auto
advisory capability. One need not to be expert in the field, the
instrument itself will give the recommendations on the
condition of the machines. Our electrical analysis, mechanical
analysis and thermal image instruments are in complete
harmony and provide a one-stop condition monitoring solution
to the customer.
Customer feedback has been a hallmark of our organization.
We continuously implement the customer feedback and
replicate same in our products. One of our innovations is
detachable display for instruments to address the safety and
ease in measurement to the customers. We believe in
continuous innovations and this is the main reason for Fluke's
leadership position in the market.
India is set to install EHV and UHVAC power infrastructure in the
coming years. Does this call for even more sophisticated T&M
equipment? How does Fluke plan to tap this demand?
Fluke has been primarily into maintenance and calibration
devices catering to low voltage electrical measurements and for
process parameters. We will continue to strengthen our
offerings around maintenance techniques that our customers
are adapting.
Tools for high voltage application have not been our focus
area but who knows a large India market can change this!
Further, due to increased power evacuation demands and
the focus to reduce the T&D losses, CTU & STU are installing
765kV transmission systems. The emphasis is on efficiency,
safety & reliability. The Fluke solution has been always
addressing these needs & we strive in future also to give top
priority to this. The increased customer awareness will lead
the customers to the quality manufacturers who can guarantee
accuracy, safety and reliability.
We expect in future with increased awareness, the market
size for us will increase. We are committed to be a part of India's
growth story and are increasing our direct presence to cater
customer need and offer them quality support. We have
recruited highly technical and growth oriented people recently
and expect to increase the team in coming years. We also plan
to open a local support center in coming future.
India's power sector is believed to have a low penetration of
T&M equipment. What is your view?
Many of our national utilities have been front runners and early adopters of state of the art test & measurement
equipment. We foresee a day to continue strengthening
their investment around same to be more productive and
efficient. Going forward, we see a lot of regional utilities
sharing the best practices with them and will invest more in
quality products than quantity.
We agree that power sector has given a little bit less
emphasis on having quality T&M equipment. But the
scenario is changing fast with new regulations regarding
efficiency, safety and reliability coming in. This has
increased the accountability of people in business. We
expect to have greater penetration of T&M equipment in
the power sector in future.
What is your reading of the local manufacturing base for
T&M equipment in India?
Test & measurement is a very large scope of devices
which may include online, offline, handheld bench top
equipment measuring electrical and/or non-electrical
parameters. This being such a wide scope we
would restrict our response with respect to test &
measurement equipment used for maintenance and
calibration measurements.
Local manufacturers are few but manufacturing is all
about scale. Take for example our own T&M niche. A global
presence is the only way for us to get to a scale so that
more and more high-end technologies can be
commercialized for the use of productivity enhancement of
our customer.
Thus, the Indian market is more about adoption and
sharing of global best practices around maintenance
techniques which can be achieved only by multiple
manufacturers in the global or local market.
The power sector is witnessing increased private sector
participation. Does this point towards increased
deployment of T&M equipment in India in future?
Like power generation, T&D sector is going to have
greater private sector participation. The public private
partnership (PPP) model is also emerging to fulfill the
power evacuation demand. In private as well as public
sector, young engineers with bright ideas are joining.
They will certainly bring change in attitude towards
importance of the test & measurement part. We
believe that this will certainly boost the deployment
of T&M equipments in power generation, transmission
and distribution.
Please summarize Fluke's growth plans in India, for the
medium term.
Going forward for us it is all about reaching to a large user
base, given all types of users and the experience of Fluke's
accuracy, reliability and ruggedness. Our philosophy is to
be close to the customer, listen well to understand unique
needs and preferences of the Indian customer, and build
products which will deliver to these expectations. The
vision is to build products listing to Indian customers and
then take our learning to the global market.