India is already a competency centre for Germany’s TÜV SÜD group for advisory and critical inspection services related to power and oil and gas sector. Now the company plans to increase its footprint in the country, informs Bratin Roy in an exclusive interview with
Subhajit Roy. Excerpts:
TÜV SÜD is a leading German training, inspection, consultancy, testing and certification company having significant presence in India. What’s your comment on the ‘Made in India’ power and electrical products in terms of performance and reliability?
Owing to competition with the global market players, it is imperative to say that performance and reliability will be two extremely critical aspects for Indian manufacturers of power and electrical products. Indian Electrical Equipment Industry Mission Plan (2012-22) aims to make India a preferred country for production of electrical equipment. If we look at some interesting statistics, only the domestic demand for generation equipment industry is expected to be in the range of US $25-30 billion. If we include transmission and distribution industry, it is estimated to go up to US $70-75 billion. In addition, there is an incentive in capacity addition, be it conventional or renewable power, and ‘Make in India’ push will be extremely crucial to achieve this goal. Having said that, we should be aware that power sector is highly capital-intensive and any disturbance in equipment and products can create massive problems for generation companies, utilities and investors.
Why is it essential for companies to have compliance with international standards?
It’s important for companies to comply with international standards mainly because of two reasons. Firstly, our domestic standards are in tandem with international standards in terms of requirements and obligations. Secondly, if these companies want to become global players in this segment, they must upgrade and comply with international standards for production, quality control and quality assurance.
How do you help companies in raising their competitiveness?
Competitiveness can only improve when you have skilled manpower and efficient production and support system. We have a large pool of human resources and adequate workforce available for the sector. It’s extremely important for companies to upgrade the skills of their workforce, if they want to gain a competitive edge. We provide specialised need-based trainings to fulfil this requirement. Also, our experts provide services like inspection, testing and witnessing critical testing which will help companies to achieve zero defect and cost-effective production process.
Brief us on the services you provide.
TÜV SÜD South Asia is the leading consulting, testing, inspection and certification (TIC) company with presence across India and Bangladesh. It is present at 33 locations including 14 labs across two countries. For process and manufacturing industry, we provide inspection, certification, machinery assessment, supply chain services, energy efficiency audit, water audit and non-destructive testing (NDT) services. Also, for the investors, we offer technical feasibility, technical due diligence, environment and social due diligence services which helps them to understand and mitigate risk. We conduct product testing for food and beverages, cosmetics, leather and textile, toys, utensils, jewellery, medical health devices and others. Our laboratories are accredited by national as well as international accreditation schemes which can help companies to achieve product conformity as per domestic and international market requirements. Our management system certification team helps companies to achieve the required system adherence as per various standards of quality, environment and safety.
In India, as the renewable energy has gained momentum, how do you see the testing and certifications business evolving?
Since the beginning, we are quite involved in renewable energy sector in India, especially in solar and wind sectors. For sure, role of third-party testing, inspection and certification companies like us have also evolved over a period of time. We initially started with testing and certification of the components and critical parts and have now evolved as a complete life-cycle service provider. Need for involvement of an independent company like us is gaining prime importance to ensure project reliability, safety and certainty. Slowly but appropriately, our business offerings have graduated from component reliability to holistic project reliability.
What kind of training services does the company offer?
Our training programmes address critical business issues and improve company’s performance while gaining new skills and knowledge. Through effective and targeted training, individuals and organisations are better equipped to handle exciting challenges ahead.
TÜV SÜD’s e-learning programmes are cost-optimised and interactive to engage participants while learning about relevant standards. With the ability to easily monitor the progress of employees worldwide, TÜV SÜD’s Digital Academy can contextualise training solutions according to your business needs. We can also customise existing course content or develop new courses based on your training needs.
TÜV SÜD’s instructor-led training programmes are developed by experts with years of experience and in-depth knowledge of relevant standards, providing an opportunity to interact and discuss ideas and industry issues with the experts first-hand. By helping individuals and organisations drive business performance, our training programmes cover the entire gamut of safety and security aspects in accordance to the relevant norms and standards.
How automation can play a pivotal role in optimising power plant performance?
Automation plays a very pivotal role in the power sector. It not only helps in power plant performance optimisation but also lends an overall reliability to the entire power plant network, starting right from generation to end-to-end transmission and distribution. Important benefits of automation, if implemented successfully are many! It helps to improve quality of service, reduce manpower requirements and improve reliability with minimal maintenance and operating costs. It will also help owners and operators to make informed decisions on shut down, maintenance, turnaround time and will help to fetch accurate and reliable information based on proven analytics and prediction. On the planning side, automation will improve enterprise information accessibility which will enable decision makers to take correct and early steps. On the distribution side, automation will help to reduce overall cost of operation for distribution network, improve service reliability and quality and enhance consumer service.
What’s your roadmap for the Indian market?
Developing new value-added services by offering solutions for rapid, sustainable, and efficient growth in power, oil and gas and related sectors is a clear roadmap for us for the future. We intend to work for entrepreneurs, business leaders, investors, owners, operators, manufacturers and government as a holistic one-stop-solution provider. We will help these stakeholders achieve profitable growth, assist them in solving a wide set of challenges which they may face during operation and help them secure their investment by offering our complete due diligence and project management services. India is already a competency centre for our group for advisory and critical inspection services related to power and oil and gas sector. We intend to expand our team and support in India to increase our reach to domestic as well as to international customers. We will also continue investing in manpower, new labs and testing facilities in India. Our recent investment related to advanced NDT and material testing lab is already under operation now and we intend to do further investment in this sector in coming 3-5 years, focusing heavily on services related to digitalisation, inspection and testing.
