Journal 15

Cover Story 1

Engineered for Excellence

Premier Engineering division’s Infrastructure is on par with the best in the world.

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Spread over an area of 200,000 sq. ft.

Premier’s Engineering division excels in two areas of speciality – wind energy and general engineering. The division undertakes complete manufacture of wind turbine steel parts like disc rotors, stator rings, stator carriers, rotor housing and supporting structures. This includes fabrication, machining, blasting, metalising and painting of the parts. Under general engineering, the division is involved in developing critical general engineering components such as metro bogie chassis frames, gear box housing etc.

PAGE 3

Premier Engineering division’s new developments and future plans.

Overview 

Development, Quality and Management — Premier’s cornerstones to success.

The Engineering division was established four years ago to utilise in-house facilities and expertise in machining and to offer job work services to large automobile industries in Pune, such as Tata Motors, Force Motors, Carraro Ltd. etc.

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The division has incorporated advanced concepts and technologies and expanded into the heavy engineering industry.

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Over the next 5 years, the Engineering division aims to be one of the leading heavy engineering industries for the supply of wind turbine parts and general engineering parts and equipments.

In four years the Engineering division has grown by 400%.

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Our Engineering division’s Assets, Its Employees PAGE 5

Did You Know...

The Engineering division is a member of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). It has been an exhibitor at the AWEA exhibition in 2010 and 2011 in the US. It is also a member of European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) and Indian Wind Power Association (IWPA).

Range of products The rotor hub and its position inside the wind turbine.

 Wind energy is a major source of power in over 70 countries across the world.  India has the fifth largest installed wind power capacity in the world. The short gestation periods for installing wind turbines, and the increasing reliability and performance of wind energy machines has made wind power a favoured choice for capacity addition in India.

Heavy duty Marine Engine Blocks Premier employee keeping a close check for 100% inspection of the critical parameter

Premier employees with the Axle Pins and the position of the Pins inside the wind turbine.

Rotor housing and supporting structure for 1.5 MW wind turbine

2 Cover Story

Infrastructure 

The engineering division’s infrastructure has excelled in the field of heavy and critical components supplies of Wind Turbine parts with strict adherence to quality and delivery commitment.

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Facilities include various sophisticated machineries and equipments like CNC Profile gas cutting, CNC Bending machine, welding equipment columns and

booms, positioners, shot blasting and painting booth, flange facer etc. that make operation trouble free and reduce the cycle time. 

The engineering division has proven records for the design and development of jigs and fixtures, with latest technologies to produce quality goods within a stipulated time frame.

Clients

CNC Profile bending machine:

Cranes and Handling Facility:

This hydraulically operated plate bending machine, having top roller size of 850 mm diameter X 3000 length, efficiently bends up to 130 mm thick plates.

Crane capacity from 3-25 tons and motorised trolleys, maximum up to 20 tons, make material handling easy and safe.

Welding Positioner and Column and Boom/ Rotators:

Horizontal Boring Machine:

With weight carrying capacities ranging from 5-10 tons, welding positioners make operations trouble-free and easy for all types of critical welding, which in turn reduces the cycle time.

The Horizontal Boring Machine imparts the availability of machining steel as well as casting components. Considering its size and rigidity, it is suitable for machining of all types of medium and heavy-duty pieces.

Cover Story 3

Continuous Development The Engineering division enjoys working on high precision, critical and challenging jobs. Nearly 80 continual improvement projects are implemented in context with improvement in quality, productivity and reduction in cycle time. For example,

time-consuming welding of hub with flux cored arc welding machine.

This increased productivity by 70%, was environment friendly, defects in welding were reduced to 95%, aesthetically improved appearance of welding and made operator fatigue negligible.

 A semi-automatic set up of SAW (submerged arc welding) machine was developed with rotating table with prior calculated feed rate and speed of rotation to replace the

Two different welding processes were successfully tried and handed

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over for production, reducing cycle time and man power up to 50% and increased the productivity nearly 40%. 

The division’s expert packing team ensures components are packed as per the client’s customised requirements.

Quality Management Systems  The engineering division has a builtin Quality Management System. It obtained a separate ISO 9001:2000

certification for their division in 2008 and the same was upgraded to 9001:2008 in December 2010.

Plan Vs Actual Production – Steel Parts (Heavy Fabrication) Plan Qty.

Actual Production

30

35

Qty.

20

24 20

20 22

26 20

24 20

24 20

24 20

20 20

20

20 20

25

20 22

30

15 10 5 0 Apr-10

May-10

Jun-10

Jul-10

Aug-10

Sep-10

Oct-10

Nov-10

Dec-10

Jan-11

Month

 The division has set seven Quality Objectives which are measured and monitored against targets through Key Performance Indicator (KPI) matrix.  The division has a wide variety of Measuring and Monitoring Equipments. Some of them being: o Digital Height Gauge of Trimos make – Range 0-1500 mm with surface plate o Painting Instruments like D.F.T. meter. Dial thickness gauge, Pull of Adhesion tester, Pin Hole Tester etc.

The actual produciton of steel parts for heavy fabrication has exceeded even the planned and committed quantities to Clients!

Materials Management Materials are the Engineering division’s sustenance. Due to this, the division adopts the following methods for “zero shortages” in procurement and material management:  In depth analysis and forecasting of material requirements 

Planning activities on a quarterly, monthly and daily basis while strictly taking the budget into consideration.

In-house designing of jigs and fixtures.

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Nurturing Supplier Relationships by:

n Generating loyal supplier base

by educating them about Premier’s basic requirements, paying them on time and making them proud to be associated with Premier. n Conducting 100% quality

n Following efficient in-bound,

WIP and outbound logistics management processes for material handling. n Using best materials in the

industry and creating strategic inventory in case there is constraint from the supplier side.

check and acceptance of material (raw and finished).

Maintaining high accuracy in components using 3D coordinate measuring machines (CMM 4 X 3 X 2 mtrs capacity) for inspection.

Precision machining on vertical turning lathes (VTL).

4 Cover Story

New Developments The Engineering division has developed a number of parts which are critical and developmental in nature.

To name a few:

Metro Bogie Chassis Frames The Engineering division has become the single most approved source in India for the supply of metro bogie frames. The division is enhancing existing facilities and tools, and creating additional ones to improve quality and productivity.

Gear Box Housing A Heavy Duty Gear Box (Power 1500 HP) was completely developed in-house. Work involved procurement of material, gas cutting, plate bending, fabrication, stress relieving, high-precision machining, shrink ďŹ tment of gear ring at -39° C, blasting, painting and inspection. There is scope for this to be developed as a regular product.

Future Planning Excelling in the fields of fabrication and machining, the Engineering division now has big plans for the future: The division is going to set-up an exclusive line for the machining of heavyduty cylinder blocks for marine engines, with CNC horizontal boring machines and SPMs.

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1 The division has developed wind turbine components for smaller capacities of the wind turbines. Now they are gearing up for manufacturing bigger capacity of wind turbine towers.

This state-of-the-art technology plant will include exclusive facilities such as a bending machine, motorised trolley mounted columns and booms, rotators, blasting and painting booths, flange facers etc.

3 The Engineering division’s long term goal is to have a foundry to meet the requirements of their valued customers.