Near Net Shape Technology "MIM” Arrives to China’s Market

GASGOO: In the Metal Powder Industries Federation held by MPIF, Indo-MIM won four awards in automotive, hardware tools, medical industries. In the automotive sector, four engine parts won grand price, one chassis part won an outstanding design award. Compared with other industries, the metal powder industry are facing what special demands in automotive industry ?

Krishna Chivukula Junior: Automotive industry is always in a state of constant flux from a component design perspective. The move towards lower displacement engines means that engine components must be smaller and more durable in almost every application inside the engine. MIM is very adept at meeting these size requirements due to its ability to incorporate a high degree of design complexity into very limited real estate on small components.Additionally, constantly pushing materials development is critical. Automotive engine component producers will continue to see an increase in the temperature performance requirements of their parts. Lower displacement engines will require superior component performance at higher temperatures in order to maintain horse-power. All this leads to demands to metal part manufacturers like Indo-MIM of superior materials and smaller components, both of which are the focus areas of our company.

GASGOO: Indo-MIM holds the world's most advanced MIM technology, compared with the traditional metallurgy techniques , what significant advantage does MIM technology has ?

Krishna Chivukula Junior: MIM is net a shape forming technology and that is the primary advantage it has.  MIM parts can be as complex, in terms as shape, as anything that can be done in plastic injection molding but achieve material properties equivalent to wrought materials.This unlocks a tremendous amount of value in terms of reducing expensive machining operations or even eliminating them entirely. When compared to casting and machining, MIM is able to offer better scalability at a lower price and is able to deliver consistently better microstructures in most material applications. MIM parts can be machined and surface treated with the same processes and machined, stamped, or cast components. Above all, they offer a higher freedom to designers to use difficult-to-machine materials that can be better suitable to application, and complex shapes that are otherwise difficult to manufacture.

GASGOO:In 2011, Indo-MIM has set up the customer service and technical sales office in Shanghai, mainly providing information consulting, project management, technical supporting and after-sales service for Chinese customers, how about the current development situation? Are there any plans to set up factories in China in the future ?

Krishna Chivukula Junior:We have gotten a tremendous reception from the Chinese market after opening our Shanghai customer support and sales office.  Chinese companies really appreciate on-site design and engineering support and we believe that this is the primary reason we are seeing such strong order inflow from China.   We plan on increasing our Shanghai development team this year to ensure that any customer anywhere in China can work with our MIM design engineers at all stages of the product realization process.  Right now, our focus is on increasing our sales, design and engineering support for new and existing customers in the Chinese market.   We do not have any plans at this point, to start Chinese manufacturing facility, but we are always open to the possibility if the right opportunity and economics should present itself.

GASGOO:As a global leader of the MIM technology, Indo-MIM provides precision-engineered products to customers for more than 40 countries, like America, Europe and Asia. In automotive sector, who are major customers of Indo-MIM in China currently? Is there any plan to expand customer base?
Krishna Chivukula Junior: We do not supply to 40 countries around the world!!   As of last year we are supplying to 72 countries globally!!   I just wanted to ensure that the record is set straight!   We supply to global OEMSs like Magna, Danfoss, Honeywell, Borg Warner, Cummins, TRW, Nexteer, Tata Motors, etc.

GASGOO: Nowadays, there are a lot of manufacturers having MIM technology in China, compared with other competitors, what is the advantage of Indo-MIM?

Krishna Chivukula Junior: Our first advantage is Experience. We have successfully put into production more than 2,500 distinct programs over the past 16 years. This gives us unrivaled insight into what the MIM process can achieve and gives us the technical expertise to unlock that potential. We have developed more MIM parts than done by any 20 other MIM companies combined. We are able to offer customized materials and special process solutions to complement our experience in MIM. Our ability to tackle extremely complicated MIM components is why we have won a total of 8 MPIF design excellence awards in the past 3 years (we only started submitting 3 years ago!). We have won the grand prize in the automotive segment two years in a row !

Indo-MIM’s second advantage is our quality systems. We are continuously improving the of all our quality certifications. It is not enough to be TS-16949, AS-9100 Rev.C, ISO-13485, etc. You have to make quality certifications into living-breathing systems on your shop floor and you need to develop the APQP practices to drive these systems from the RFQ stage through the launch of the component. We spend a lot of time and money training our engineers and operators in the practices and problem solving techniques that are required to make our APQP development process strong.   We have spent years refining this approach and it is one of the key ingredients to our success.  We also conduct daily shop floor audits of all quality systems to ensure that we are compliant and to drive improvements in the quality system.

Indo-MIM’s third advantage is scale and vertical integration of key operations.We strongly believe that you must supply a finished component to the customer. We integrate the supply chain for the component and ensure that all critical processes are carried out in-house so that product development can be fast and quality can be controlled. Our in-house surface treatments plant runs a wide array of plating and corrosion resistant chemical processes that are routinely used in the Automotive, Consumer electronics, and Aerospace industry. We have NADCAP approved treatment lines that are also approved by most of the major aerospace space companies in the world. Most of our heat treatment processes are in-house and between both of our locations we maintain 35,000 sqft. of machine shop floor space that hosts a wide array of CNC and conventional machining technologies; Turning centers, Turnmills, VMCs, HMCs, surface grinding, centerless grinding, profile grinding, double disc grinding, drilling, reaming, tapping, lapping, electro chemical deburring, magnetic deburring, barreling, vibro finishing, shot blasting, and sizing etc. 

Indo-MIM routinely does all of these operations in-house and we are constantly expanding the breadth and scope of the machining capabilities available to ensure that we have the appropriate finishing technologies to suit our customer’s needs. Our Scale means that we have the ability to invest ahead of customer demand and gives us the ability to bring operations in-house when the customer needs it, or if it is not generally available in India.In some cases, we are the only vendor in India running some of the special processes that we do (something our Aerospace & Automotive customers really appreciate). Please see our website www.indo-mim.com for a complete list of the special process and machining capabilities we have on offer or contact one of our sales office with any question you may have on what we offer !

Indo-MIM also integrates backwards on the process. We have invested $10 million USD over the past 4 years in our toolroom and are able to make in excess of 55 MIM production and proto-type tools per month (12,000 Sqft. toolroom). Our production tooling capability ranges from single/double cavity tools to32 cavity hot runner tools with internal lifters and cam operated unwinding mechanisms capable of achieving tight tolerances on thread inserts(avoids thread machining…an expensive operation). Indo-MIM only purchases CNC machines from world renowned equipment suppliers for its toolroom operations.  When you step inside our toolroom, do expect to see Makino, Mitsubishi, Agie Charmille, Mistui and Okamoto in every single toolroom department.  We have the capability to mill graphite and copper depending on the detailing requirements of the project (graphite milled electrodes are used to achieve very fine details in the tool). We only buy high capability machines because when it comes to tooling, the second best is just not good enough for MIM. Our in-house tooling capabilities not only mean low lead times, but they also allow us to innovate on tool design to ensure that the maximum amount of productivity can be achieved on the molding machine. This saves money for customers running high volume programs because we can build a 16 cavity tool and run the program with automation on a single molding machine whereas another company may run 2 tools of four cavity or even 4 tools of two cavities each.

Indo-MIM’s fourth advantage is in-house compounding. Many MIM companies, in an effort to cut costs and in my opinion cut corners, use pre-made feedstock from an outside supplier. For a small company this is fine, but generally pre-made feedstocks restrict the types of parts you can develop in molding and restricts the material solutions you can offer your customer. We have made blending one of our core competencies and if we choose, we could probably sell our feedstock to other companies (we won’t). We control rheology on every batch and spend a lot of time on developing alternative binder formulations that solve different molding problems and different filling problems that inevitably arise from molding and sintering of extremely complex part geometries.

In-house blending has allowed us to fine tune our metallurgical properties and development new materials quickly. We recently added TiAlV4 to our product mix. We did it in 4 months. I shudder to think how long it would take to develop this if we had been using pre-mixed feedstock. We would still be working with the supplier instead of launching new production programs. Inconel 713C is another addition to our material list. In addition to being able to develop new materials, in-house blending allows us to adjust chemistry for microstructure and mechanical properties. We do this for our customers all the time and they appreciate it by awarding us a larger share of their volumes and by awarding us new programs.

Indo-MIM’s 5th and most important advantage is its people. We have a highly dedicated team of product engineers, quality engineers, manufacturing engineers, production engineers and of course great managers. Many of these people have been with the company since inception and form the backbone of the company’s DNA! Out team loves to take on challenging programs and works tirelessly to put them in production. We train our engineers relentlessly and foster an open culture, which rewards employees for spotting problems, finding solutions and escalating issues when they come across road blocks. We use Six Sigma extensively with particular emphasis on Taguchi orthogonal array design of experiments and complement this with an array of Shainen DOE techniques. We train our engineers to track and maintain enterprise level database systems which track capability by process and part batch in an online system that our people developed in-house!   This system came out of our SIX SIGMA training (which we started 5 years ago – we have more than 60 black belts company wide but not all are ASQ certified). We have over 30 ASQ certified black belts and the entire senior management team was trained in Six Sigma. Every year we train 12-20 black belts, 50-70 greenbelts and run a yellow belt program for machine operators. Everyone speaks the same language when it comes to processes and everyone understands the importance of improving and maintaining capability. It has taken a lot of work to get here, but is has been worth it.

GASGOO: In order to saving energy, lightweight and miniaturization have gradually become the development tendency of auto industry, a number of chemical companies even have an idea that auto parts should manufactured by plastic instead of steel. Is it a hit for the metal powder metallurgy industry? How will Indo-MIM respond to the trend of lightweight?

Krishna Chivukula Junior: Smaller parts mean less weight and smaller parts mean that there is more design complexity in a reduced component surface area and the use of advanced materials – MIM is a small part technology with the ability to do many light materials! Some amount of substitution may happen, but as a company we focus on high temperature turbo applications, pressure applications, locking systems and sensor applications. All of these applications require extremely good mechanical properties for temperature, pressure and force resistance. Plastics will not be able to play in that space (for now). These applications will only increase as engine technology improves and engine displacements decline. We are also producing Ti in MIM and we are working on other light-weight alloys.  With our superior materials development capabilities, I am sure that we will remain a player in this segment for a long time to come.

GASGOO: The choice of power type play an important role to MIM products performance and scope of application, can Indo-MIM guarantee the stability of products´ quality in the case of unstable price of Metallurgical materials price in China ?

Krishna Chivukula Junior: Indo-MIM can guarantee powder quality. Indo-MIM only sources powders from established powder suppliers in Japan, Germany, China, USA and Europe. Before sourcing decisions are made, Indo-MIM audits the suppliers facilities to ensure that equipment selection and shop floor practices are world class. Surveillance audits of powder suppliers are done frequently especially when we have not worked with the supplier for a long period of time.   Additionally, upon receipt of a powder, a sample of each batch is sent for analysis to ensure that chemistry, tap density, and other key quality characteristics of the powder are maintained.   Indo-MIM does this for all incoming powder lots. If an incoming lot fails any of the stringent quality criteria, then the powder is sent back to the supplier.

Indo-MIM manages powder price stability by entering into long term supply agreements with almost all of its powder suppliers. A typical contract is 3-4 years in duration and spells out the terms and prices under which we will source powders from the supplier. This ensures price stability over program life. Indo-MIM is the single largest consumer of MIM grade powders in the world and thus we consume an enormous quantity of powders each year, and have the growth and volume to ensure that all volume commitments are met with suppliers. In return, most of our suppliers fix the powder price over the term of the contract. This helps ensure price stability over the long run.

GASGOO: What do you think that how the demand for precision-engineered products  in China’s automotive industry will change in the next 5 years? And based on this situation, what measures will Indo-MIM take correspondingly?

Krishna Chivukula Junior: China has a very strong manufacturing economy that has achieved a high degree of scale in a very short period of time. Additionally, with the rebalancing of China’s economy towards more domestic consumption for its newly emerged middle class, there will a plethora of component applications requiring excellent performance at reasonable cost in the Chinese automotive sector. There are many well-established players in the Chinese domestic market and all of them are working very hard to improve the performance of their automobiles relative to their western competitors! China is already the largest market for automobiles in the world and it will only get bigger. We intend to have a strong presence in the domestic Chinese auto market. Indo-MIM will develop new materials for engine applications; the other area where Indo-MIM excels is marrying the MIM technology with high productivity SPMs that achieve the last 5% of dimensional control (+/- 3 microns). Of course, we will continue our relentless drive to achieve vertical integration in all machining and special processes so that we are a one stop solution to China’s automotive component requirements We believe that this approach will provide a lot of value to domestic automotive companies that work with us and that they will reward us with new and challenging programs. We do MIM components that no other company in the world is able to do at prices that no one can match.  We think this is a good value proposition for the Chinese automotive industry.