NORD expects 70-80% of future business to come from digital platform – My Nord.

NORD India along with the focus on technology integration and quality products, believes it’s strong team with just 4% attrition has grown alongwith the company and  its products. It has helped them to maintain the core competencies of the group and prioritise the product first as a  strategy.

For Nord everything revolves around its products.

P L Muthusekkar, 
Maning Director,
Nord Drivesystems.

Could you please elaborate the core competencies and strength of NORD India?

What I believe and always tell is that my product is my hero; everything revolves around the product. Our product is of good quality, has high reliable factor and long life and meets the efficiency parameters. In fact, our product by virtue of design is oil leakage free as we use single piece housing design, right from small geared motor to a larger gear box- that means the entire housing is made in one single piece and it is machined in one single setting. So, you buy 10000 gearboxes all 10000 gear boxes will be alike. There will be no difference. Not like one may have more tolerance and one is having less, or some problem in assembling – all that is not there by virtue of design.

Another strong point is the team. Our attrition rate which is about 4% is one of the lowest in the industry. In 14 years of its existence in India, 5% of employees in NORD India have been associated right from the beginning, over 25 per cent have completed 10 years and 60per cent have completed five years. That shows how the team has evolved around with this product. Moreover, there is a good cultural fitment between India and Germany. These are all our core competencies of NORD India. I keep the product in the prime focus and other things come later.

Where does NORD India stand among the subsidiaries around the globe?

Out of 36 subsidiaries, currently we are at number 4 only behind China, US and Germany. All the other three are large and they have started long years ago. US subsidiary started 40 years ago, China is more than 30 years and Germany is 55 years old and India is only 14 years and that shows that we had a remarkable progress to reach the number four position.

Is it in terms of volume or revenue?

It always goes by revenue in simple terms. If you go by number of gear boxes I think China will stand number one than any other subsidiary because there are certain segments where the requirement is 40000 pieces.

Where do you stand in order booking?

We are at number three as per current situation.

In terms of horse power, what is the bandwidth on offer?

It starts from a fraction horsepower to those in kilowatts; that is the size of product we have. The largest product goes into cement mills or cement industry or which goes close to 2000 kilowatt – that is the bandwidth we have.

While achieving the target of 100 crore in 2014 you had doubled the target in the next five years. Where do you stand now?

Yes in 2014 we completed 100 crores and we celebrated our success with our customers, with our channel partners and we also had a family day for all our employees and their families. That time we had a mission of reaching 200 crores by 2019 and we are pretty much on the target. We should be doing somewhere around 200 crores by the end of this December.

What made your success possible in the projected timeline?

Even before reaching 100 crores mark we had our vision for 200 crores. Today, we have a 500-crore vision plan drawn by 2025 even before the 200 crore is being achieved. So, it is like well begin is  half done. So, we do it much advanced and we try to bring in the clarity among the team. So, the team puts all its efforts, channelize in single direction of vision. We discuss threadbare on whichdivision or which sector should give more revenues and work accordingly.

Which sectors are you expecting to contribute to the growth?

Sectors go up and down and we cannot really predict that one particular sector will always be booming. Few years ago, we used to have steel mines as one of the prime sectors driving growth for NORD India; but the last 4-5 years steel industry and mining industry were not firing.  But what is the dynamism required by our team and what is the forecast required by the management on how the sectors are revolving and how we are fully geared up and fully prepared to meet those demands counts. For example, when BJP came to power in 2014 we were 100% sure that they would take up the construction sector, especially road construction on priority basis. So, we focused our energies and efforts in the road construction sector, and accordingly we had the products with us. Then we knew it is the pharmaindustry that is going to fare well, we accordingly pressed on our accelerator in that particular industry.

In construction and mining sector what has been the performance?

Currently about 22-25% of our business comes from construction and mining industry.

Are you expecting any growth from those sectors?

Obviously, because infrastructure creation is the key for growth for any country; without infrastructure nothing happens. Many countries put infrastructure in place and then they try to bring in investments and industries and have job growth. I think we have a long way to go in terms of improving the infrastructure.

How have you been able to leverage the benefits of the digital platform?

A lot has gone digital globally. Last year we launched the My NORD, a digital portal where our customers, channel partners, and our team can log in and select the models and get the offers; place the orders, then check the order situation. It has already seen a good progress as we have about 30% or 35% of the volume of business from My NORD; but expect this to touch at least 70 to 80 per cent in the coming future

What is your production process and how your manufacturing process has been ramped up using latest manufacturing technologies?

Basically, our products are already Industry 4.0 certified. This is used predominantly in the warehouse logistics operations.  Once the products are already certified then the manufacturing process has to align with it and we have the sophisticated plans to completely automise our parent company. You just need to feed the raw material and you get the finished good and you can track with the RFID where the goods are moving including automated goods movement and tracking. There are a lot of innovations and experiments going on in our parent plant.

How have you enhanced or augmented yourback up service capabilities?

After sales support comes very important in an engineered product like gear motors and gear boxes.For example, in a road construction equipment or in a mixer, mostly the usage is very heavy duty, there are lot of power fluctuations, sometimes it runs on electric power, sometimes it runs on generator power, the frequency hertz can change. So, this can definitely affect the geared motors and geared boxes of its performance. We have service locations across the country and service engineers are available in almost all our offices and we also have service partners. We do lot of service training programs, orientations. We have made lot of short videos in terms of how to adjust the brake, how to get maximum efficiency from the gearbox, how to pour oil to what level. These short videos are either available on YouTube or our website.  We also have a mobile service van. We talk of how to get the best out of our products.

Could you elaborate on product and technology trends in general?

If you look at the technology and the R&D and everything lies with our parent companies.India is only an assembly unit and about 90 to 95% of the products of NORD range we can assemblehere and providesales and service support.  When it comes to some localisation, yes, the technology is transferred to us in terms of the drawings and engineering and data are available where with the help of our parent companywe try to develop these products locally from India. When we try to source it locally from India it is also a global kind of a purchase. That is where there are some technology transfers. Otherwise if you look at we don’t have anything to be trending between the parent company and India for technology.

But does it have any impact on the lead time for the supply?

No, if you plan well andif you stock well then, we will be able to meet. We have 8 weeks delivery time from Germany. So, it is a question of effective planning and keeping the right stock, I think that is what matters a lot.

Do you expected the steel sector to open up which may drive your business?

We are expecting the market to open up in many of the sectors particularly the steel industry which was not doing well for many years. We expect lot of revamping and lot of expansion and operational efficiency to come in, in those steel plants.

What are your initiatives on skilling up people?

Skilling is part and parcel of our program. My German colleagues come here, and they do a continuous improvement of skilling of our people. Our people go for training. In fact, I can say that very proudly that almost about close to 50% of my shop employees have already been directly trained either in Germany or in China. Even in my sales and marketing team more than 50% have already visited our larger plants and have trained.

We also take care in terms of training the engineering college students. In 13 engineering colleges we have trained students. We are planning to go to another 2 or 3 in this year, one in Bhubaneshwar with the Orissa Government and one with Don Bosco in Delhi.

Everywhere performance of the company last couple of years?

We have been growing 20% plus. Currently we are at 25% growth for this year so far. We expect this 20% growth because the government has come in full form with absolute majority which was very much needed for at least five 10 years. We want the policies to be driven, especially the river linking, improving the waterways etc.

What differentiates NORD India from competition?

One-word answer is response. The pre-sales, post sales, my response to my customer, that one word differentiates. Second word is the attitude towards the customer.

Being an energising leader for quite sometime for the company, how do you envision further growth of your company?

Basically,we need to look at what the market wants, market demands and then you need to be quick. That is why I used the word response, which is one single thing which can make a big difference. Today the key differentiator is the kind of response, attitude and approach. This is more of a soft side, but I think the soft side comes to the decision making because Indian mentality is more emotion driven.

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