Upgrading norms is an opportunity

Following global standards, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries-VST Engines Pvt Ltd believes in setting and meeting quality standards across the supply chain from root level, to ensure sustainability. Managing Director Kenji Kawamoto discusses what would drive growth in engine demand, and how frequently upgrading emission norms is an opportunity for industry players.

How do you see the demand for diesel engines in India?
Consistent growth in tractor and construction equipment (CE) industry will positively drive engine demand in off-road industry. For the first time, tractor volume is close to 9 lakh and CE is around 1 lakh in the fiscal year ended in March 2019. Staying at peak may get into market correction in short term, but long-term forecasts remain positive. On other side, DG set industry, which is also a major driver for diesel engines, is not busy as before with increased power availability across India. Nevertheless, larger capacity DG set demand is expected to grow considering development of smart cities and airports.

What is the major challenge faced by the diesel engine industry currently?
Change in emission norms. Though it is not a new phenomenon, frequency of upgrade in recent time is challenging. Inferring emission norms and upgrading engines on time with minimum changes in cost and configuration, is the key. We deal with changing norms on the back of our engineering experience of over 100 years and a decade-long operation in India. So far, we are able to support our customers effectively on time, in India as well as exports, for advanced norms existing in the world today. Therefore, this challenge is an opportunity for companies like us, to demonstrate our expertise.

What are the essentials for delivering sustained performance with high quality?
Sustainability comes if quality standards are set and met across the supply chain from root level. In addition, continuous education should happen to vendor partners & whole supply chain must run with customer centric approach.

We follow the quality standards set by our parent company from Japan. We implement the same throughout our supply chain and make sure it happens without chaos, by continuous education to our vendor partners and systematic processes. It works.

How can your products help achieve maximum efficiency while also maintaining environmental standards?
This is an arduous task if you are approaching customers with off-the-shelf product variants. But, our offerings are always customised. If you see any of our emission certificate, there will be lot of variants under one engine family. Still, if customer needs something else, we do our internal development again to meet the requirement. In short, we always prefer to give more choices within environmental standards, so that customers can choose the right products best suited to their machines.

We deal with changing emission norms on the back of our engineering experience of over 100 years and a decade-long operation in India.
Kenji Kawamoto, Managing Director, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries-VST Diesel Engines Pvt Ltd.