The Aerospace and Defence sector in India is at a turning point, thanks to the indigenisation being undertaken by the Ministry of Defence and Indian military forces. Aerospace and Defence is a major focus area for ‘Make in India’ programme of the Government.
Plans are in place to scrap most of the obsolete equipment being used by our military and modernise to the latest technology. Unlike automotive, power and other general engineering sectors, the major difference when catering to Aerospace and Defence segment is that the batch sizes of components to be manufactured is relatively much smaller.
At the same time, the variety of components is very large and the kind of machining operations involved are much more complex. Due to the limited batch sizes, buying dedicated and complex machinery to manufacture these components is not economically viable. Furthermore, the kind of Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) Machines required for handling the complexity of aerospace and defence components usually need to be imported making it very capital intensive.
This is where Forward Manufacturing Company comes in. It is a part of the Sharpline Group, which is a leading specialised Computer Numerically Controlled (CNC) Machine Tool Manufacturer catering to Aerospace, Defence, Power and Railway sector for nearly 30 years.
The Sharpline Group has a long standing reputation of being able to indigenise almost any kind of specialized CNC Machine or Automation Equipment at a fraction of the cost of their imported counterpart. And in this way it has supported a lot of Indian Aerospace and Defence customers by way of import substitution. “With our parent company’s strength, Forward Manufacturing Company has been able to put in place a facility with customised special purpose CNC machines at a significantly lesser cost. This in combination with intelligent fixturing, programming and tooling knowledge built within our team over the last decade has helped us to be cost competitive and in turn pass on the benefit of a low price point to our customers when it comes to precision component manufacturing”, states Kavya Arun, Director, Forward Manufacturing Company.
Eyes on Excellence
The company’s manufacturing process is extremely agile and its turnaround time for a new component is usually in the range of 1-3 weeks depending on the complexity of the component. It has manufactured over 1000 variety of aerospace and defence components in the last decade alone with nearly 15+ new parts being proven every month. All of its fixturing is designed and manufactured in-house.
We have dedicated quality personnel for each and every customer, who are focused on in-process and final quality checks. We strictly follow a 100 percent quality control inspection approach instead of a random sampling inspection approach
It has an AS9100D certified manufacturing facility. Since every component it manufactures will ultimately be a part of an aircraft, helicopter, missile or some other aerospace and defence equipment, the entire team from Management to Engineering to those on the Production Floor understand the importance of ensuring that every component that leaves the facility meets the required quality standard.
Forward Manufacturing is a Tier-I component manufacturer for almost all the major PSUs and Private Players in Indian Domestic Defence and Aerospace Sector. They manufacture structural fighter aircraft components, aero-engine components including blades, helicopter components, missile and launcher components, booster components and recently have also started manufacture of mechanical components of guns.
Future Projections
Forward Manufacturing Company’s current manufacturing facility is located in Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra. “This year, Forward Manufacturing Company will be establishing a 45000 sq.ft. manufacturing facility at Aerospace Park in Tamil Nadu in a Joint Venture with a European Company. This facility will focus on manufacturing of very high precision components both for domestic supply as well as export”, concludes the Director.
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