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The decision, which has been under consideration
for some time, is a game changer and will lead
to a sea change in the history and ecosystem of
aviation and aeronautics and probably graduate
into aerospace activities in the country.
System Houses
The question arises as to who are the stakeholders
that will be party to this initiative of the government
in making military transport airplanes in the
country, in either standalone mode or, after partnering
with a global source? To start with, there are
well-established private engineering houses like
L&T, Godrej, Bharat Forge, Mahindra Defence,
Tatas, and the newly-formed Reliance Aerospace
Technologies Ltd. They are all itching to enter
and grow into aviation.
These companies have the muscle power of engineering
and technology, the accumulated power of finance
and management, strong supply chain ecosystem,
extensive infrastructure and significantly, well-established
global connections and networking.
Indications are that Reliance has set goals not
only in civilian and military aircraft but also
in space and missiles.
These major groups are on their drawing boards
and board rooms to grab this opportunity and move
forward and upward at the earliest in various
arenas of defence and aviation while several other
companies like JK Defence and Samtel have forayed
into some critical subsystems.
MSMEs
These are the smart private industries all over
the country in huge numbers and they have contributed
substantially to Indian manufacturing ecosystem
both in quality and quantity as-well-as in employment
and exports. These are nimble, well managed, compact
industries which are now mostly headed by highly
qualified 3rd generation engineers and technocrats.
They have demonstrated innovation, new product
development in very short timelines, hitting success
in adverse conditions and overcoming bureaucratic
hurdles with sheer persistence and drive. They
have indigenised many high-tech products and they
have also demonstrated indigenous development
of many more high-tech products not only for defence
but also for other applications.
There are many clusters of such highly successful
MSMEs around Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune, Mumbai,
Ahmedabad, Delhi, Chennai, Coimbatore, Thiruvananthapuram,
Belgaum, Nasik, Nagpur, Chandigarh, Kolkata, Kanpur
and some more. In the beginning they were mostly
part of industrial estates and were committed
suppliers or licensed manufacturers for large
industries and OEMs.
Today, CEOs of these companies are 2nd generation
or 3rd generation engineers many of them having
been educated abroad. These companies can definitely
do wonders in the Indian manufacturing ecosystem.
Many of them have upgraded themselves from being
small component manufacturers to producers of
major assembles built to specifications and there
are hundreds who are already exporting their products
all over the world. Many companies have also been
shortlisted under defence offset programme.
Samtel in fact is an excellent example. It has
tieups with French Thales, US Boeing and some
other companies. The electronic cueing system
in helmets for US Navy’s F-18 Super Hornet
pilots for instance has components made by one
of its subsidiaries in Germany.
Academy - R&D Synergy
It is heartening to see that research, design,
development and testing synergy between academic
Institutions and R&D laboratories within the
country has blossomed. The Government, through
AICTE, DST, CSIR, DRDO, DAE, ISRO, IT, MNRE, Telecom
Electronics and Communication etc. has actively
been enhancing this synergy. Even industry bodies
like FICCI, CII and ASSOCHAM are also adding their
bit to encourage and support these interactions.
The only gap left is with the industries –
both MSMEs and large enterprises – to have
trust and faith in the capability of this synergistic
duo of R&D and investment. More investments,
faith and integrated efforts should lead to a
dream environment for ‘mind to market’
and financial success at home and in exports.
Money and Management
The Government has announced committing Rs10,000
crores for start-ups.
This amount is beyond the investment that will
likely come from private venture capitalists and
accelerators. There are cases of large number
of start-ups who have been funded by both private
and government funding agencies, especially around
Bangalore which is now almost being treated as
the start-up capital of India.
There are individuals and business houses that
have got liquid cash and are ready to fund both
low risk and high risk ventures. This community
will surely grow in numbers and strength and provide
more and more support for start-ups.
Almost all of the leading academic institutions
in the country, both government and private, will
also have mechanisms of supporting start-ups,
incubators and their own research parks. Even
multi-nationals in India will also have parallel
mechanisms of supporting such start-ups and futuristic
ventures. This will enable them to subsequently
acquire new science, new technology, new products
and solutions.
The world is pursuing new product development
both from top-down from corporate strategy and
bottom-up through individual brilliance.
Right Ecosystem
It can be visualised that in the coming years,
the country will be enjoying a very fertile ecosystem
with all the players highly informed and ready
to work towards complex engineering products to
be designed, developed and marketed for both Indian
and global markets. Already many similar things
have happened, especially in defence programmes
covering various types of missile systems, combat
vehicles, unmanned aircraft, aerostats, defence
engineering equipment, helicopters, ground vehicles,
ships and boats. A lot of lessons have been learnt
in these programmes.
What is required is to list down bad practices
and precedence which should not be followed or
repeated. Overshooting of timelines by long periods,
in most programmes, has to be a thing of the past.
Also, best possible use of existing facilities
has to be made. For example, one standard solutions
a public sector setup chooses is to start a new
factory whenever a new product needs to be taken
up. This is the least productive way of investing
money in land, infrastructure, factory, additional
amenities, thousands of employees and colonies
for them.
Costs have to be competitive, timelines sacred,
efficiency the key, and quality perfect. The end
product must work well and must look well, to
quote the founder of French Dassault Aviation.
The work covering planning, strategy, R&D,
product development, assembling, testing, marketing,
product support etc. are to be managed through
large number of distributed and networked smart
small sized start-ups and industries (including
MSMEs) which are agile, nimble and lean in staff.
The core team for the product development like
a military transport aircraft has to be very small
in size taking care of strategy, management (both
technology management and project management),
finance and marketing. The core team also has
to handle R&D, designs, documentation, IP,
product support and subsequently assembling, testing
and deliveries.
Multi-tiered manufacturers
and System Houses
To reiterate, the MSMEs are capable of not only
manufacturing various components, modules, LRUs
and sub systems, they can also carry out original
design, development and subsequently manufacturing
in numbers. The large scale system houses should
therefore harness the strength of MSMEs and outsource
almost all the manufacturing and subassembly efforts
to small scale industries clustered around major
metros and big cities.
That is how global majors like Boeing, UTC and
Airbus operate.
However, a system house should manage the supply
chain efficiently and effectively. It is also
seen that the large system houses tend to treat
the suppliers as just a vendor base and of lower
class and category. This attitude must change.
The small scale industry should be treated as
not only tier-1, tier-2 partners but also as “knowledge
partners”. The small companies do value addition
to the system houses.
However, system houses should ensure a proper
mechanism of ensuring quality assurance and quality
control in order to assure high reliability of
products. This is a very difficult task and identification
and development of partners should therefore be
done very carefully by the large system houses.
Once developed, these small scale partners should
be nurtured, supported, appreciated and leveraged.
System Houses and Quality
HR
While the system houses conceive, evolve, realise,
develop, test and integrate full systems with
due considerations of system design and system
engineering, these system houses should also be
sensitive to the changing world.
It is well established that the current generation
of young and smart engineers are aggressive, self-motivated,
ambitious, highly networked and capable of doing
wonders but they need direction, guidance, decision
support and encouragement. That is where the requirement
of senior, competent, experienced and capable
leaders/techno managers exists.
It is a difficult task to locate eminent personalities
to work for system houses. If such individuals
can be located, probably, the best synergy can
be brought between the young generation and these
leaders/mentors. This is a big challenge but if
the industry wants to realise a military transport
aircraft, manufacture them, operate and maintain,
then this synergy is essential.
In the recent years, there have been complaints
of employees being high on tobacco. This practice
has to be banished absolutely. It is impossible
for a person high on tobacco to deliver quality.
Technological, technical and engineering duties
demand precision; not imagination.
The core group for high-tech products like a
military transport aircraft should consist of
members having right background in science, technology
management, R&D, quality, production and value
engineering. Otherwise, even a large industry
may have a short life.
There are examples of HMT, ITI, ECIL and Hindustan
Motors who were not able to catch up with the
fast pace of growth in technology to remain market
leaders.
These companies had outdated concepts of first
buying some numbers of any product (machine, TV,
Car, etc.,) from a foreign supplier and then producing
them under license. This model, notably, is same
as the one cleared by Government for the Military
Transport Aircraft.
The important point that emerges here is that
sustained R&D should be part of the system
houses. Unless R&D becomes part of an industry
it is bound to have a short life. It is essential
therefore that the core group in a System House
includes a strong R&D element to sustain the
product and the company.
Many times, large system houses and industries
declare that they have R&D centres but generally.
They do only ornamental changes in a product.
The core science and technology remains unaltered.
Many industries with weak R&D setups continue
to depend on foreign technology and this is neither
a good practice nor a good strategy. They will
not survive unless they have captive market or
a protected environment.
Summary
This is a great opportunity now for Indian large
scale industries and system houses in the private
sector to get into development and manufacture
of high-end defence products like military transport
aircraft.
It is expected that many such decisions will
follow and new opportunities will be available
to our system houses. In their excitement and
to get short time gains, they should not miss
the bus and take shortcuts. They should plan integrated
and networked solutions and the rest will follow.
It would not be very long for India to have indigenous
high tech aerospace system.
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