The skies have always been clear for the India aviation industry. Surprisingly, on the field, the aerospace industry has vouched for the major changes fuelled by growing demand for air travel and a return to growth in the Defense sector. Incited by this, a new agile business, OEMs emerged where numerous companies are ramping up their operations to deliver better value and more innovative and advanced solutions to their clientele. Yet some bottlenecks underlies with the absence of dedicated companies who could work on these niche areas of manufacturing at a competitive cost, because of their high Engineering and Labor rates. To channel individual strengths, experiences and expertise of people to create something bigger and more impactful in the aviation MRO Industry, UniMech Aerospace came into existence in 2014. UniMech Aerospace And Manufacturing Pvt. Ltd. is an ‘AS9100 Rev C’ certified Company holding expertise in manufacturing and engineering of Structural Fabrication, Mechanical Tooling Assemblies for GSE and MRO Companies in Aerospace sector. The organization is a strategic supplier and sub-contract manufacturer for various Global MRO Tooling companies in Europe, US and Middle East.
UniMech’s 3-year journey holds a colossal in getting established as an Aerospace MRO & GSE tooling powerhouse in India. It was a delight to have a conversation with Mr. Anil Kumar Puthan who discussed over a host of issues in line with UniMech’s advent, its journey so far and the plans ahead.
“We don’t want to be resting on our laurels of being the ‘Most Preferred’ suppliers to our customers, but would want to surge ahead by increasing capacity and provide increased value to our customers.” Anil Kumar Puthan in conversation with The CEO Magazine
Indian MRO & OEM’s spectrum is still juggling among the hurdles. You could have entered a smooth emerging line of business…they why did you go off the beat?
Our customers were finding it difficult to scale the manufacturing of products due to its high complexity, Raw Material availability, Special Process Suppliers availability and many other reasons. We at UniMech have a unique advantage on these factors as we have very good suppliers for most of the Raw materials and Special Processes. We have a very seasoned engineering & quality team, which can take up highly complex projects and we have delivered over 400+ complex projects.
Another major hurdle for Indian airlines is getting their planes repaired at Indian facility as they have to be sent to Dubai or Singapore or Europe for complete maintenance activities. The flight traffic in India has been growing rapidly and the number of airlines and airplanes have been increasing to address this growth. With the increase in a number of planes operated by the airlines, we look forward to supporting Indian airlines to operate efficiently cutting down a lot of Logistic cost to our Customers as well as Airlines / MRO’s.
As an Indian company, we support “Make in India” initiative by having the ability to deliver some of the very complex MRO and GSE tooling. We also provide Offset to any of the defense and aerospace companies which can hugely benefit them.
Take us on the tour of the products and services being offered under the hat of UniMech?
We manufacture and assemble the tooling and handling equipment for Maintenance Repair and Overhaul of Aero engines structural parts and also manufacture ground supporting equipments for airplane and engines. These tools will enable the maintenance engineers to hold, clamp, Assemble, Disassemble, Inspect and perform the repair activity in the Aero engines / Aircraft Parts at ease. We provide end to end solution wherein our customers provide the drawings and we manufacture and assemble as per the requirement and also do the performance test before dispatching. In addition to MRO and GSE tooling, we are into manufacturing custom components for industries like Aerospace, Oil and Gas, Healthcare Machinery, and General Engineering Industries.
What sets UniMech apart?
Core strength of UniMech is Engineering & Quality manufacturing techniques. We have got a solid team who could crack any of the drawing provided by the customer and define the processes to manufacture any given Mechanical Assembly. Our understanding of drawings is among the best manufacturing companies in the world. Other factors which give an edge to our business is the complete Tool Room setup with welding and assembly facility. We perform the entire test as per the drawing and compliant with various International Standards. We furnish the attested quality documents with all our deliverables. Our customers are very happy. Here’s one our customer’s testimonial: “UniMech is among our best strategic suppliers in the world and can be compared to the best engineering and manufacturing companies in US & Europe.”
What’s about the competition?
In India, currently, there are not too many companies whose core focus is towards MRO activities. We have an edge over all other competitors as our main focus is towards MRO / GSE at this moment and we are striving towards becoming the number 1 supplier in India for all major Airlines. We can achieve this in another 2 years’ timeframe through our strategic partnership with our customers and also the Suppliers.
The next plan…
As part of that, we are looking at recruiting more high-quality engineering and manufacturing employees and increase the number of strategic suppliers. We would want to add better manufacturing management techniques by deploying better technologies. We plan to increase the square footage of our shop floor to support increased capacity. We are working on getting “AS 9100 Rev ‘D” certified soon and also add special process and be NADCAP approved. In terms of leadership, we have some very seasoned leaders with a wide range of experience and our board advisor is an aerospace industry thought leader from UK who is highly accomplished.
We want to stay nimble and keep looking at making our customers, suppliers and our employees successful. In addition to being the number 1 aerospace MRO and GSE tooling company in India, we would want to scale our aerospace components business as well to leverage our high-quality engineering and manufacturing capabilities.
Milestones
- Aug 2014 – Launch of UniMech Consulting – Engineering Services
- Sep 2014 – Delivery of Engineering Services to UK and US Clients
- Apr 2016 – Launch of Manufacturing & Assembly Setup in Peenya, Bangalore
- May 2016 – Direct Export of Aero Engine and Structural Tooling Assemblies and Precision parts to the Middle East and European Clients
- Oct 2016 – Pulled in Strategic Investors to form UniMech Aerospace & Manufacturing Pvt Ltd
- Jan 2017 – ISO 9001-2008TUV – Austria – Certified
- June 2017 – AS9100 Rev C – TUV Certified
- ‘Go To Supplier’ within 8 Months of inception
The hand steering UniMech
Anil Kumar Puthan
Anil manages the end-to-end aspects of design, manufacturing and execution of large scale projects at UniMech. Beginning his career as an engineer, he went on to undertake multiple, complex roles in various organizations including handling 50 engineers as Project Manager in QuEST Global. Anil has a keen eye for details and is the first to get to the heart of a problem. No matter how complex the problem is or what specific tool or machine is required, he works together with his engineers to put together the concept, set up systems, work on complex engineering design and optimize project and performance management efficiently. Anil loves taking on challenges and is always figuring out solutions to various engineering problems.
