Jamna Auto Industries Ltd. (JAI) is one of India’s largest manufacturers of leaf and parabolic springs for commercial vehicles. Keeping pace with the changing needs of customers, the company has been making changes to its product range.
JAI is making a notable adoption of light weighting, yet providing required rigidity to the commercial vehicles. To meet its ambition of reducing weight and size of the product, JAI has already introduced parabolic springs in majority of Indian commercial vehicles. This has not only resulted in weight reduction of about 25-30 per cent but also better life and ride.
In its continuous journey towards light weighting, JAI is further optimising the weight of the springs and suspension systems. “We are working on further reduction of weight by specially developed steel and optimising manufacturing processes,” says Mr. Sunil Laroiya, Head R&D and International Business. “This would help us to further reduce weight by about 10-15 per cent without any compromise with the performance of the parts. In fact, the fatigue life of product will improve further.”
Application-specific solutions
It goes without saying that the company that manufactures products for various commercial vehicles, SUV & MUV will make changes to meet the requirement of different applications. For instance, high stress springs for MCV & HCVS and composite springs for MUVs and LCVs.
“Composite springs weigh about 50-60 per cent less as compared to traditional leaf springs. We have already developed composite springs for some vehicles and these have been successfully validated in India,” explains Mr. Laroiya.
High Stress Parabolic Springs will give an additional weight saving of about 15 per cent as compared to current parabolic springs being used in India. “We are also working on Hybrid Springs Technology for HCVs. This would reduce spring weight by 20-30 per cent if compared with the current range of parabolic springs and by about 40-50 per cent if compared with the traditional leaf springs,” he explains.
JAI has also achieved considerable weight reduction in lift axle systems being manufactured by them. The company has developed fabricated axle in place of the forged axle currently being used, thereby reducing the weight of the complete suspension by about 12 per cent. “We have also managed to achieve additional weight reduction of about 15 per cent by developing new high strength steel for lift axle,” beams Mr. Laroiya.
Upgrading technology
JAI has set up a state-of-art R&D centre in Pune which has capability to design, and validate complete suspension system as well as any component that goes into the suspension. The R&D centre is also equipped to collect the road load data for various products and simulate the same on test rigs to establish the actual field life of the product. “We have a well-trained engineering team with vast experience in OEM as well as Suspension Industry,” reveals Mr. Laroiya.
The company has invested in latest technologies in all the plants to ensure that it can supply world-class products to the customers across the globe. To ensure product consistency and reliability, all critical equipments have been imported from Europe and Japan.
The company is diversifying into many more suspension products to give a single-stop solution to the OEMs so that they can rely on a single supplier instead of dealing with multiple companies.
