News and Views, Thursday September 24, 2004
Posted : September 24, 2004 at 7:57 pm [IST]
BHEL plans cheap machines to tackle Chinese threat
Business Standard, Kolkata
Competition to Indian power equipment manufacturing companies from China is all set to change the rules of the game. The average cost of setting up a power plant is set to decline to less than Rs 2.7 crore per megawatt price offered by the Chinese) from Rs 4 crore at present.
Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd is all set to develop boiler technologies that would compete directly with cut throat prices offered by Chinese majors to West Bengal project.
The Chinese equipment manufacturer Dongfang Electric Corporation (DEC) has bagged the 2×300 mw Sagardighi project.
Somehow, BHEL is not growing the way it can or it should. One of the reasons must be the interference of the ministry controlling it. As we know by now, the NDA minister who was a Shiv Sena nominee did not give the extension to the former MD Mr. Ramchandran and the post remained vacant for a long time. BHEL is one of the Navratnas among the PSUs and has a very high technical capability to grow as a global company but it is not possible without full autonomy and a totally professional management. Will the new government look into it?
Indian scientists top MIT list
PTI
HOUSTON: Seven scientists of Indian origin were named among the world’s top 100 young researchers by Technology Review , a magazine published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). These honours have been conferred on the basis of exceptional talent in fields like bio-technology, medicine, nanotechnology and computing. 69 men and 31 women were selected from a pool of 500 nominations this year. Researchers are Varadarajan, Anuj Batra, Ramesh Raskar, Chaitali Sengupta, Ravi Kane, Vikram Sheel Kumar and Ananth Natarajan.
Varadarajan, director of Terascale Computing Facility, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, conceived and built the world’s third fastest supercomputer from a cluster of 1,100 Apple Macintoshes. The project cost around $5 million against the world-class supercomputers’ cost of around $100 million or more. The young researcher used off-the-shelf commercial products to design the supercomputer in less than three months.
Batra, 34, is a Systems Engineer at Texas Instruments. He leads one of the industry’s top teams advancing ultra wideband wireless technology which provides the high-speed needed for streaming media applications with low power consumption.
Raskar, 34, a visiting research scientist at Mitsubishi Electric, has built large computer display systems that seamlessly combine images from multiple projectors. His image-processing and graphics research may lead to new applications in entertainment, image-guided surgery and user interfaces.
Really great are the achievements of these scientists. But then a question, why does it not happen in India? With so many IITs and IIMs, we hardly get any story about the achievements of our scientists. Will better media coverage of the scientific work that are going on in different national laboratories and institutes and the renowned scientists and technologists not encourage youngsters to opt for pure science for research that is badly needed for our country if we want to be in the league of the advanced nations?
Wipro plans low-cost computers
Wipro is developing a low-cost computer that would run on low power and would have inbuilt source of two hours of standby power supply.
Azim Premji said the low-cost computer is being designed mainly for the 700 million people living in 600,000 villages of the country who had not benefited from the digital revolution. Standby power would mean the computer would be attractive to the rural people, who experience frequent power cuts It will bring the benefits e-governance to villagers and would also attract more students to schools in rural areas.
With the prices of computers going down, perhaps many in the rural area too can afford to have the benefits of computerization and internet. Unfortunately the lack of electricity in most of the villages is the biggest handicap. Arranging rural electrification on priority is a necessity for the government and without that one just can imagine any development in villages. However, the researchers must go for developing cheap computers compatible for internet connections requiring minimal power that can be arranged through solar energy or other easier means.
MUL, SMC to pump in Rs 6,000 cr in new plant
Maruti Udyog announced a Rs 6,000 crore (Rs 60 billion) investment in the next 4-5 years with its parent company Suzuki Motor Corp as part of which a new car plant would be established through a joint venture where MUL would have a 70 per cent equity, an outcome of a settlement reached between the government and the Japanese auto major.
MUL’s another joint venture with Suzuki — Suzuki Metal India — would produce diesel engines for domestic and international markets. MUL has 49 per cent stake in Suzuki Metal and this would end the dependence of the domestic car giant on imported diesel engines from French company Peugeot for its products.
It is a nice culmination after an unnecessary spat between the two over Japanese firm’s ‘unilateral’ announcement to invest Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) in India.
The investment includes the new car plant, diesel facility and R&D. The new diesel engine plant will cater to Suzuki’s operations in Europe, Asia and even Japan. Resultantly the capacity of the plant is now likely to be 300,000 units with an investment of about Rs 1,000 crore. The board also decided to study the feasibility of a gearbox plant in the country which would help Maruti indegenise fully. While the new plant would make ‘high-end’ cars, Maruti would keep producing small cars, and will ultimately be the global hub of Suzuki for new small cars..
At present, Maruti has a production capacity of 300,000 units at its three existing plants which would be stretched to 500,000 units this year.
An unnecessary dispute cropped after the declaration in Japan of Suzuki’s decision of a new car plant without any consultation with the Indian government. Minister if Industry showed a firm approach that was also well supported by Finance Minister. Suzuki could realize its mistake and sent its team immediately to sort out the problem.. With the problem resolved, the manufacturing sector gets a boost. The congress party was concerned because of the fall in the share price because of the announcement by Suzuki.It can be well appreciated as congress is emotionally involved in this enterprise in the formative years.
It is surprising why Suzuki is so secretive about setting up a gear manufacturing plant. Its announcement only promised a feasibility study. Normally, along witht engine transmissions are also manufactured. Even at design stage, the transmissions are to be matched with the engine. So far gear technology is concerned, it is shop floor controlled. Quality is built in gears during manufacturing particularly the heat treatment effects are to be balanced to obtain the best performance results. The technology is well developed in India. Toyota’s decision to manufacture transmissions in India near Bangalore for their vehicles all around the world is the example. Even the majority of the machine tools are cheaply available in India.
- Indra
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