A new scheme expanding the scope of the Common Engineering Facilities is under consideration of the Union Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises, according to a senior official of the Department of Heavy Industry.
It is expected to be announced either in August or September, Senior Development Officer N.L.Goswami said without sharing the specifics. Apart from bringing into the ambit larger components, it would also have some other aspects based on the learnings from the two existing Common Engineering Facilities, he added.
One of the components of the Ministry’s Scheme on ‘Enhancement of Competitiveness in the Indian Capital Goods Sector’, the Common Engineering Facilities were conceived to assist identified sectors with common hi-tech machines as well as testing and quality control equipment. While the facility in Chakan is for Dies, Moulds and Tool industry, the other at Bardoil, Surat is for textile machinery.
SME users
The objective is to provide access to small and medium enterprises who individually could not afford such hi-tech machines, the official said, speaking on the sidelines of an awareness workshop on Industry 4.0 organised here on Tuesday by the Department with trade and industry body FICCI.
According to November 2014 notification on the Scheme, the facilities that can be provided as part of Common Engineering Facility Centre are foundry and heat treatment; testing laboratories, designing facility, common prototyping, general and specific machining. The facility would enable capital goods machinery manufacturers to develop capital goods to meet the large requirements of the country.
Industry associations
Industry associations, Mr. Goswami said, could approach the Department with a proposal that on approval would be eligible for a one time grant-in-aid up to 80 % of the project cost. Noting that the Scheme on ‘Enhancement of Competitiveness in the Indian Capital Goods Sector’ is aimed at encouraging domestic production and thus cut down on the import of capital goods, he said setting up of Centres of Excellence was another component.
So far development CoEs had been approved for 11 machine tools technology at the IIT Madras and three welding technologies at the PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore.
Academic collaborations
The CoE are industry-academic collaborations and 80 % of the project cost is extended by the Ministry. The industry partners had to fund the remaining 20 %, he said. Discussions, he added, were under way with IIT-Kharagpur and IIT-Bombay for new CoE projects.
On the Industry 4.0 workshop, Mr. Goswami said Tuesday’s programme in Hyderabad was the sixth and the last in the series conducted with the focus on helping industries, particularly MSMEs, graduate to advanced manufacturing trends that would help improve quality of products.
