Taihei Electric Co. Ltd. was established in 1948 as a specialty manufacturer of electrical equipment for railroad vehicles, contributing to the recovery of the railroad industry during Japan’s restoration after World War II. With the passage of time, the company shifted its focus to become a dedicated manufacturer of door-shutting devices offering a wide line-up of door-related products for different types of buses. Taihei is part of Toyo Denki Seizo which is a public listed company in Japan.
As a leader in door-operating equipment for buses, Taihei has pioneered development of new products leveraging on its decades of experience and strong technical know-how. The company specializes in door operating equipment for folding and sliding doors which have been popular with bus users throughout Japan. Taihei’s compact and lightweight design is well appreciated in Japan where it has over six decades of market leadership. As part of its global expansion, it is gearing to tap the huge potential in the Indian bus market.
Taihei has partnered with Electronik Tooling Solutions (ETS) as the distributor for its products in the Indian market. Established nearly two decades ago, ETS is a leading equipment supplier of semi-conductors, solar cells and printed circuit boards (PCBs) as well as a service provider for PCB and PCB assembly Industries. The company is based out of Bangalore and is currently doing a market study for supplying Taihei products in India.
Monopoly in Japan
The Japanese bus market is now almost saturated with quality buses which might not require replacement in the near future. This has pushed bus manufacturers in the country to look at other markets for export. Around 5,000 buses are rolled out in Japan annually with Taihei enjoying a monopoly when it comes to pneumatic door systems.
Says Mr. Yoshikazu Hirose, Global Sales Division, New Business Development Department Taihei Electric Co. Ltd.: “We have over 60 years of expertise in pneumatic automatic door systems in Japan. All the bus manufacturers in Japan are our customers when it comes to pneumatic door systems. We have been the outright leader in Japan for over six decades while we entered the South-East Asian market few years back. We have just started our plans for other overseas markets and are presently targeting India.”
Taihei makes pneumatics in Japan while it makes the complete door system at its Chinese facility. It will follow the Chinese model in India, as it explores the possibility of developing two ranges of products for India – one for the premium segment and the other for the mass market segment. “We have two factories, one in Japan and the other in China. For India, we will initially source the products from either of them depending on the market requirement and then look at producing locally in the country”, adds Mr. Hirose.
Different bus applications demand different types of doors such as sliding door, glide slide door, folding door and swing door. In the swing type door, the out-swing door is more reliable with lower failure rates, but is not preferred in India because of the huge crowds of people who take to bus travel. The in-swing door is used though it is not the most reliable, is less strong and uses smaller pneumatics. Leveraging on the results of its market survey, Taihei is in talks with Indian coach builders and is likely to come up with new products for the domestic market in the coming months.
In India, less than one-tenth of the buses and coaches adopt automatic door systems, while the remaining 90 per cent have manual or no door. However, the market trend is towards automatic doors with pneumatic systems. “Locally made pneumatic systems have been a failure, leading to many accidents. We are sure that the customer requires much higher quality with better precision though it may cost a bit more. We need to educate the customers and the bus drivers as well in order to maintain the doors in good condition, so that they last longer”, says Mr. Ramesh Amrithraj, Proprietor, ETS.
Taihei will be targeting the bus and coach manufacturers in India, starting the high-end players. The company seems to have understood the kind of impact the huge Indian population would have on bus doors and is geared up to face the challenge of maintaining the doors. “Our quality is unmatched, and we always focus on keeping our customers happy. We understand the amount of effort needed to maintain the doors and will equip our service team to support our customers. We will send our service engineers to customer sites for regular maintenance and also upgrade their knowledge for maintaining the systems”, states Mr. Hirose.
Taihei Electric participated at Busworld India in Mumbai in February and received a good number of enquiries for its range of products. The city-bus door, the in-swing door for luxury coaches and sliding doors for AC city-buses, in particular, received good response at the fair. The company hopes to build on the good initial response and work closely with ETS towards garnering a good share of business in the Indian bus market in the coming years.