SKF, with an experience of over 100 years in bearings, is a leading global supplier of seals, mechatronics, lubrication systems and services; which include technical support, maintenance and reliability services, engineering consulting and training. SKF is represented in more than 130 countries and has around 15,000 distributor locations worldwide.
MOTORINDIA had a formal discussion with Mr. Arun Shivaram, Director, GTCI, SKF Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. on the company’s commitment towards emerging markets like India and its growth strategy. Mr. Shivaram says, “SKF as a group is extremely committed towards emerging markets in Asia like China and India which are highly critical for us. As a major strategic decision, to highlight our commitment towards these markets, we have opened world class technical centres in Bangalore and Shanghai. These facilities are developed to serve our local customers with quality services and are efforts are focussed on making bearings smarter.”
SKF India’s growth strategy is led by its philosophy of providing quality solutions across the complete value chain. Offering better products and innovating new solutions, customizing according to local needs, the company believes in proactively giving its customers the best value proposition for its products in the industry. Talking about the quality standards of the company’s products, Mr. Shivaram says, “Brand is of prime importance for SKF. Today emerging markets look for value and we at SKF bring global knowledge to our local customers to add value. We increase the value by providing integrated solutions without compromising on our brand quality. SKF Six Sigma is a continuous improvement programme that targets to eliminate waste and defects in all business processes – at SKF, its suppliers to have a positive impact on customers. These projects are run by extensively trained black belts and green belts. White belts exist to quickly solve basic issues, by systematically adopting a simplified DMAIC model.”
Talking about the company’s Global Technical Centre India (GTCI) in Bangalore, he says, “We have a global metallurgy and chemical laboratory with world class facilities, here in Bangalore. Here we constantly strive to impart knowledge, educate our suppliers and constantly look at ways to bring efficiencies into the demand chain as well as the supply chain. This centre is responsible for testing, validation and product engineering and development in SKF India and its global activities. We contribute close to 60-70 per cent of innovation to the global market and 30-40 per cent for the local market needs. By innovation we mean innovative solutions or designs we develop. 
At GTCI, across all the five platforms of SKF, we do product engineering and development, have a testing and validation centre, where we can test and validate bearings. The centre hosts a lubrication laboratory where we not only do the design or the product development of lubrication system but also test it. We also have a mechatronics lab and a product investigation centre in which we do field usage analysis. With this set up SKF is all geared up to offer end to end solution present within the country to all our customers.”
India being a price competitive market, the challenge for companies like SKF here is to target the troubleshooting areas of its OEM customers and come out with value-added solutions. “In India, we have a strong market strategy with good penetration levels right now and we plan to increase it in the next five years through value-added solutions. We plan to focus on the total cost of ownership, total cost of management and develop highly reliable products. Our truck hub units (THUs) come with a 3,00,000 km warranty, which in itself is a testimony of product quality. These units are designed for half a million kilometres in India whereas in Europe, the THUs have been designed to meet a million kilometre warranty. In India we have presence in the commercial vehicle space in both OE and aftermarket. We have a good market share for the SCVs and LCVs in the country’s leading commercial vehicle manufacturer. Our association with Volvo is strong globally and therefore we have started working closely with their collaboration in India. The penetration is in the single digit area. Our aftermarket presence is much bigger in some vehicle segments. We are doing very well in the replacement market. With respect to MAN and Scania, we have a 30 per cent strong global market share. For Daimler vehicles, we have a strong relationship in Germany”, added Mr. Pranab Laskar, Head of Sales – Trucks, SKF India.
SKF India believes in providing products and solutions that use minimal energy, as per the principles ingrained in the SKF BeyondZero philosophy, to ensure global environmental sustainability. The company has been heavily concentrating on products which will reduce friction. It also focuses on energy efficient bearings which reduces 30 per cent CO2 emission on transmission products. Even though SKF supplies only wheel bearings, it has the capability to analyse a complete truck on its performance in terms of transmissions, gears and wheel hubs, and prove how the friction is getting reduced. SKF also offers right solutions for heavy duty diesel engine manufacturers which include Cummins, Volvo to name a few.