Q. Please brief us about company’s Indian & global reach?
LMT Tools belongs to LMT Group, a family managed holding company. The Group bundles several, leading technology companies with more than 1,200 employees at 13 locations worldwide. LMT Tools is based out of Oberkochen, Germany. As a group we have four principle brands LMT Fette, LMT Kieninger, LMT Onsrud & LMT Belin. Two of these brands come from Germany, one from France and one from the US.
We have the manufacturing base in Chakan, Pune where we produce hobs and catering to the Indian automotive industry from motor-cycles and scooters all the way up to cars and have graduated including trucks and tractors. We are expanding the manufacturing programme to round tools and gradually we will be moving into other tools as well, as and when we see the necessity. The reach and go to market approach has given us lot of confidence having established Centers of Competence for gear cutting, milling, tapping and thread rolling – here we have most of our engineers trained in Germany, thereby ensuring we offer performance solutions to the customers in sync with what they exactly want.
LMT Tools India also caters to the export demand for Gear hobs & received Star Performer Award for Highest Export for Year 2013-14 and 2015-16.
Q. Please also highlight the latest initiatives in cutting tools industry domain?
Now everyone is talking about green machining and industry 4.0 and technology like IOT. We are working closely on Industry 4.0. Back home in Germany which is where most of these technologies are introduced, our team is working closely with the universities, colleges and the leading companies and we are part of the group with which we try to ensure that as and when such progress is made it gets translated. So if and when a particular market is beginning to see and show demand for such things, we are one of the few, who will not be left behind. We are very much participating in most of these activities; for example, if you ask me one of the things which you see here whether it is part of Industry 4.0 or not, some of our thread rolling system we have 3D printed covers. So things like that have started coming in. So we are able to turn around pretty fast, when customer wants something which is highly customised. To sum it when the progress is made at the market end, we are certainly not caught unaware.
Q. What are the market opportunities for your company’s products in India?
We are concentrating on niche and highly focused in specific areas. With the growing demand in Indian Automotive industry we maintain the No. 1 supplier position. Our LMT Kieninger range of products – Advanced Tools like Line Boring Bars, Motion Tools, Cylinder Boring Bars with auto compensation for wear correction, tools to produce spherical shapes are predominantly used in production of automotive industry, we are easily among the top three suppliers of these tools and are working closely with most of the machine tools manufacturers and end users. We have unique Thread Rolling System where we certainly claim the pole position globally. Aerospace and Medical sector is growing in India and our round tools in the field of High feed milling and special Solid Carbide End-mills carving a name for itself.
We see major opportunity in Die and Mould Industry for our products specially designed for roughing, semi-finishing and finishing operations.
Q. Is there any plans for expansion & new investment in terms of product development or new technology adoption to cater the demand of the industry?
We plan to expand our manufacturing base in India adding the new products to our manufacturing program.
Q. What is your vision for your company?
To achieve manufacturing excellence & become preferred supplier of all major Automotive, Aerospace & Die & Mould Industries in India. Expand manufacturing base for LMT Group products in India.
