Voith Industrial Services targets over 25% growth

Voith Industrial Services India, the local arm of German conglomerate Voith’s industrial services vertical, is aiming at sustaining more than 25 percent year-on-year growth in the ongoing fiscal year.

The company focuses on three primary service verticals — maintenance services (production equipment, paint shop services, powertrain services, facility services); project-based solutions (project management, automation, energy conservation audits, condition-based monitoring) and production support services (value added assembly, wheel-and-tyre, in-plant logistics and crating services).

Talking to Autocar Professional, Sudhir Gurtoo, managing director, Voith Industrial Services India, said: “The last financial year was a good year for us, although it wasn’t so for the automotive industry. We performed well due to our niche specialised services. We continue to anticipate more than 25 percent year-on-year growth from our overall operations. The maintenance services vertical stands as the largest contributor in terms of business and team size for us even today.”

Voith Industrial had rolled out its operations under the first vertical, which dealt with maintenance of automotive production plants of OEMs and suppliers. Under this head, the specialised team of engineers at Voith can provide services for examining the operational capabilities across body shop, weld shop, paint shop, machine shop and the assembly shop floor.

The company, which had a team size of close to 530 people in 2014, now employs more than 1,200 people, which are spread out across the country. Growing rapidly during the ongoing year as well, it may recruit another bunch of 350 skilled engineers to its headcount.

“We plan to add another 350 people this year. They would be site managers, site engineers, supervisors, team leaders, technicians and experts. It works as a pyramid structure. At the bottom of this pyramid, we have technicians, who are usually ITI or diploma engineers. They are then trained further and are imparted with special skill sets. Our teams are placed inside the plant and the service support runs 24x7. I have a central team based in Chakan (near Pune) which includes engineers with skills across niche areas such as PLC (product life cycle), robotics, conveyor experts and others,” added Gurtoo.

Voith has approximately 35-40 customers under this vertical. “We are growing by providing more services to our existing customers under this head,” he said.

Voith’s logistics services with specialised crating are also fast gaining recognition in the industry. Categorised under the production support services head, the company packs, transports and delivers components to automotive manufacturing plants. Among the parts that Voith has transported are radiators, lamps, wiring harness, clutch plates and others.

“Our crating services vertical is also doing well. We are now moving parts across India — from Rudrapur to Chennai and from Jamshedpur to Pune for our customers. Thirdly, our project-based services have also picked up and I see a lot of demand comes from the plants located in South India,” remarked Gurtoo, who is keenly waiting for the implementation of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) across India.  

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