The Illinois-based Tenneco, a leading designer and manufacturer of clean air and ride performance products and systems with principal brand names like Monroe, Walker, XNOx and Clevite Elastomers for automotive and commercial vehicle original equipment markets, has expanded its Indian operations by setting up its sixth manufacturing facility in the country, at Chakan near Pune. The new plant which has close proximity to key customers in the region like Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Volkswagen and General Motors produces emission control products and systems, and supplies ride control products on a just-in-time (JIT) basis to different OEMs.
Detailing the different initiatives taken by the company to enlarge Indian operations with a major shift in focus on commercial vehicles, Mr. Pankaj Kapoor, Deputy Managing Director, Tenneco Automotive India Pvt. Ltd., told R. Natarajan, Managing Editor & Publisher, MOTORINDIA, during his recent visit to the Pune plant that the latest facility is equipped with all modern systems like the state-of-the-art converter canning technology, robotic welding and assembly, automated muffler manufacturing lines and a modular assembly line for ride control products. It also supplies clean air products to commercial vehicle customers. As such, the Pune plant is considered by the management as a major hub for developing and testing technologies for India-specific clean air programmes.
With a current daily capacity to produce over 2,500 exhaust systems, the Pune plant, now employing around 360 persons, intends to grow at a rapid rate based on the growing customer response for its products.
Referring to the company’s other facilities in India, Mr. Kapoor said: “On the ride performance side, we have recently set up a Dynachrome high-speed hard chromium plating facility for piston rods at our Hosur plant. This plant supplies to both aftermarket and OEMs. The Ride Bus installed at this plant can fine-tune the products at the developmental stage itself to the requirements of OEMs. The Chennai plant manufactures exhaust systems and modular assemblies for OEMs like Daimler for its BharatBenz trucks, Ford and to the new Datsun Go cars. Our Bawal plant in the North makes shock absorbers. We have also launched a complete range of dampers for commercial vehicles.”
Since aftermarket is the backbone of auto component manufacturers, Tenneco too has been putting in a lot of effort in this area. In order to provide genuine spares, the company has set up two Monroe shops, one in the West and the other in the northern part of the country, to cater to the ever-growing number of customers. It is also planning to open two more shops to cover the whole country.
Mr. Kapoor further observed: “The Monroe brand is a unique concept in the automotive industry. It clearly differentiates the product from other brands within the automotive area. The response from the customers has been quite good. Our aftermarket growth year-on-year has also been much faster than the market for ride control products. We have grown 8-10 times in the last nine years and have over 100 dealers selling our products all over India.”
Besides meeting the requirements of the local OEMs with its designs systems, the company has its centre of excellence at the global level focusing on developing core systems and technologies to meet worldwide requirements. But its application engineering team in India, both on the ride and clean air side, is led from India in collaboration with the global centre of excellence. Further, the company proposes to set up a facility at Sanand where a number of automobile OEMs are now investing heavily.
“Also this year our focus is going to be on commercial vehicles and developing a testing centre at Chakan. We will also increasingly focus on ride control low-cost products. Clean air is to focus on after-treatment technologies for Euro IV, V, etc. We are waiting for legislation norms to be fixed by the government. In the long term, the Indian market is going to have a double-digit growth and would definitely be a big market”, Mr. Kapoor added.
Ride tuning bus: An excellent initiative
The primary goal of a shock absorber is to help achieve optimum performance in terms of ride and handling. As an essential component of the suspension system, the shock absorber directly influences a vehicle’s characteristic feel and how the driver and passenger experience the vehicle’s ride, including the degree of comfort.
Tenneco India has a state-of-the-art facility for ride tuning vehicles. It is a complete mobile workshop equipped with world-class machines for building & measuring struts and shock absorbers. It is also equipped with an electro-magnetic testing facility to offer precise measurement for each tuning session.
Ride tuning can be described as partly art and partly science due to the complex behavioral science behind vehicle dynamics which is hard to simulate or predict via a strictly scientific approach. The only way to achieve the required ride and handling performance is through experience on various ride work activities.
Tenneco India has developed its very own ride tuning skills using Tenneco’s global bank of vehicle tuning data and expertise applied to Indian terrains, creating unique knowledge that remains exclusive among the company engineers.
Tenneco India’s ride tuning bus with advanced and robust machines was introduced in January 2013. India ride engineers are trained in Europe by Tenneco global ride experts. The bus has a world-class damper testing machine, valve kits for all Tenneco designs, special assemblies and fixtures, and a unique washing machine and gas filling tools, in addition to specially made tunable dampers used for ride work. The climate-controlled bus has a meeting room.
Tenneco engineers are able to tune all vehicles to customer-desired requirements without any compromise on ride and handling. The valve and damping parameters are finalized during ride trials on a variety of different road surfaces. This activity generally happens at the customer site along with OEM experts.
Tenneco India’s ride engineers are involved in a variety of ride work, both in India and overseas, and are highly appreciated by OEMs.