Sundaram-Clayton Ltd invests Rs 150 cr in new city foundry unit

The Oragadam plant has been set up with an investment of over Rs 150 crore. This major capacity expansion aims to meet the rapidly growing demand for its products from the automotive industry and will primarily serve a South Korea based passenger car major which is present here. With a capacity of 8,000 tonnes, the plant will produce machined castings ranging from 1.9 kg to 7.2 kg. 

“At SCL we are committed to work as closely with the customer as possible,’’ said Lakshmi Venu, the Joint Managing Director of SCL. “This facility reinforces our drive to serve our customers by cutting down supply times because of the proximity to their factories and gives us a competitive edge. This is a critical advantage given the lean inventory management of our customers who want the supply chain to be agile.”

SCL is confident that the Indian automotive market will continue to see robust growth. 

With fuel-efficiency improvements being important to the Indian market, Aluminium components will play a key role in supporting OEMs to meet their consumers’ expectations. This capacity expansion is a part of SCL’s strategy to partner in the light-weighting of their customers’ vehicles, both with R&D capability and a responsive supply chain.

Sundram Fasteners Limited (SFL), part of $7.2 bn TVS group, announced that it has won the prestigious Deming Prize for all its seventeen plants located in India. The TQM initiative at SFL was driven by its MD Arathi Krishna.  

The Deming Prize is a coveted quality award presented by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) to companies that have achieved breakthrough results by the application of TQM. SFL experienced distinctive performance benchmarks being created by TQM and decided to implement TQM in a systematic and unified manner across its plants. 

Krishna, the first woman MD ever to receive the award says,” It is especially gratifying that SFL has managed to simultaneously win the Deming Prize for all its seventeen different plants which cover a range of technologies from casting to forging and products and customer segments from Aerospace to commercial vehicles to cars and wind-mills in a short span of six years.”