Mr. P.D. Pant, Managing Director, Metal Power Analytical (India) Pvt. Ltd.
Metal Power Analytical (India) founded by Mr. P.D. Pant in 1987, provides a comprehensive range of products and services to meet the analytical needs of metal industries. The company’s product portfolio spans Laboratory Optical / Atomic Emission Spectrometers, Mobile Spectrometers, Hydrogen analyzers for molten Aluminium, Certified Reference Materials, Sample Preparation Machines for spectrometers as well as a wide range of accessories. Its Laboratory Division also offers services in Material Analyses and Proficiency Testing for other laboratories. The Company has over 25 years of experience serving the needs of ferrous and non-ferrous metal industries and has its presence in 35 countries across 5 continents including North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Mr. P.K.Balasubbramaniian converses with Mr. Pant to understand Metal Power from close quarters and get more insights into the engineering acumen and inventive spirit of the company which is already known for its customer centricity. Excerpts:
Metal Power Analytical (India) founded by Mr. P.D. Pant in 1987, provides a comprehensive range of products and services to meet the analytical needs of metal industries. The company’s product portfolio spans Laboratory Optical / Atomic Emission Spectrometers, Mobile Spectrometers, Hydrogen analyzers for molten Aluminium, Certified Reference Materials, Sample Preparation Machines for spectrometers as well as a wide range of accessories. Its Laboratory Division also offers services in Material Analyses and Proficiency Testing for other laboratories. The Company has over 25 years of experience serving the needs of ferrous and non-ferrous metal industries and has its presence in 35 countries across 5 continents including North and South America, Europe, Africa and Asia.
Mr. P.K.Balasubbramaniian converses with Mr. Pant to understand Metal Power from close quarters and get more insights into the engineering acumen and inventive spirit of the company which is already known for its customer centricity. Excerpts:
We specialize in the analysis of metals. In this field, we have two key areas of focus at present. The first is arc-spark optical emission spectrometry (OES), where we offer the world’s widest range of arc-spark OES. The other is the measurement of Hydrogen content in Molten Aluminium. In both the fields, we have patents to our credit, which we leverage to offer superior technical and economic performance.
As with any industry, the last 25 years have seen a number of innovations and developments that have transformed the industry. In ours, quite definitely the most influential has been the advent of CCD (charge-coupled device) and CMOS (Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor) detectors as the detectors of choice. Till the late 1990s, PMT (Photomultiplier Tube) detectors were accepted as the only type that could meet really high-end needs. The advancement in CCD and CMOS have led to a complete change. From ~5% of the market then, ~95% of the market today is dominated by CCD/CMOS detector spectrometers. Indeed, today these detectors offer the highest-end features and the lowest of detection limits. This has seen spectrometer performance improve rapidly across the board – while size and costs (acquisition and maintenance) have dropped dramatically.
This has had another big impact, where vacuum optics are no longer used. Today, virtually all new OES use Argon-optics – which result in lower capital costs, lower noise, lower energy and maintenance costs as well as improved stabilization times and reliability.
This is not to discount other improvements of course. Some of these are the use of digital current-controlled power sources, FPGA technology and the capabilities that software systems offer. These have resulted in far smaller and lighter OES while also adding a host of analytical facilities that were earlier unthinkable.
From a user standpoint, the biggest changes have been:
When it comes to metal industries, we offer end-to-end solutions for chemical analysis of metals. Firstly, our OES – the higher-end ones in particular – analyse every element possible – including the gaseous ones like Nitrogen, Oxygen& Hydrogen. This reduces the need for separate gas analyzers! Then, we offer all the associated equipment that laboratories may need, including high-quality Sample Preparation Machines, Sampling Moulds, Argon Purifiers, adapters for various types of samples and most importantly, Certified Reference Materials (CRMs).
Through our Laboratory division – which is NABL-accredited – we offer a wide range of CRMs, which are needed by OES users for validating instrument performance. Further, we also offer Proficiency Testing (PT) Services which are needed by Labs as part of their NABL requirements. We also offer services to Laboratories that wish to obtain NABL accreditation to assist them in setting up their infrastructure and processes in a compliant manner.
We offer the widest range of OES – with each tailored to meet specific needs. For the foundry sector, this means that we’ve designed tailored models that cater to the needs of:
For all our customers, we also offer a unique value proposition as a vendor in that we are fully indigenous and have all our Research as well as Service fully in-house. All our Service engineers are fully on-roll and technically trained. They are accountable directly to the MD and the reporting tree ends with the MD, ensuring that each and every customer is assured of the highest level of service – and also direct access right up to our MD if he is dissatisfied in any way!
Further, as our R&D-cum-Applications Lab is fully in-house, we also routinely offer custom developments to any customer that needs it. This ranges from the development of customized analytical programs to software applications and even linkage of our system to larger plant-management systems that clients may run. Our value proposition is to offer all our clients the lowest TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) in the world – through tailored products and service and support that not just meets, but exceeds every expectation!
Absolutely. The world over, in every field you care to evaluate, the most successful firms are the ones that build their business on the foundation of quality – in products as well as services. From Tata to Patanjali to Bharat Forge to Menon Pistons, no business leader can be faulted as neglecting quality. This applies equally to foundries as well. Focusing on quality yields three direct benefits, all of which impact the bottom-line heavily: a) Reduce the cost of rejections and rework – Rejections and rework cause drop in productivity in all cases and if it’s an external rejection also cause a negative impact on customer and market reputation. Eliminating these directly improves bottom-line as you reduce the cost of labour and operations, while also increasing output!
b) Save on expensive alloying elements – When you focus on quality with the right setup, you can control your melt far more precisely. Aiming for the lower limits on expensive alloying elements (like Ni, Cu) directly saves costs while not impacting price as customer / grade specifications will accept any value in the entire range! Thus, margins increase for the same product – all of which go straight to the bottom-line;
c) One gets better customers! – This is self-evident. The best customers look for the best vendors – and the best products almost invariably command the better price! Furthermore, with the right Quality Control and Quality Assurance setup, one is better placed to develop high-end alloys which command a far higher unit price – while the raw material costs remain largely similar. This, again, directly improves the bottom-line All this is of course, without looking at the very basic fact that more and more buyers today conduct vendor audits and evaluations that do take a critical look at the quality infrastructure and capability of the vendor. If one is lacking on this of course, one misses out on business as a whole hitting not only the bottom-line, but also the top-line!
Our range of offerings could be summarized as below:
Metavision 10008X: The first optical emission spectrometry (OES) in the world to be fully CCD-based and yet offers every single high-end feature available.
This is a lot like a parent being asked to name their favourite child! Each model we offer carries something unique. In fact, most of our models are only developed once we are clear that we have a patentable / patented idea that it is based on, making it capable of offering something that nobody else can offer or offering class-leading performance at a dramatically lower TCO!
That said, if forced to choose one, I would probably highlight the Metavision-10008X. This is the first OES in the world to be fully CCD-based and yet offers every single high-end feature available. It features the best of the CCD advantages – including being compact, rugged and economical, while also offering features no CCD OES has ever offered before, such as Time Resolved Spectroscopy, Soluble-Insoluble analysis, sub-ppm detection limits and analysis of even “difficult to analyse” elements like Oxygen, Nitrogen, Carbon, Sulphur, etc. down to as low as 1 ppm! Covering the entire usable spectrum, this OES is technically capable of analyzing virtually every element on the periodic table.
We continuously strive on two fronts in this matter:
We have about 1,700 customers today and each is special in their own way. Several have multiple units we’ve supplied to them and it would take an age to list them all. Some of our more easily recognizable customers are Tata Steel, Sterlite, Godrej & Boyce, GIRDA, CMERI, Modern Malleables, Tekno Valves, Gestamp, Hyderabad Castings and others of this ilk.
Exports have emerged as a focus area for us in the last few years and we’ve seen rapid growth on this front. Today, something like 30% of our production is exported and this proportion is increasing annually. Overall, we have now got a presence in something like 35 countries overseas spread across five continents – with just Australia and (rather obviously) Antarctica missing!
Metavision 108N+: A versatile model ideal for analyzing all types of metals and alloys
Service is mission-critical. What we offer is capital equipment – it lasts for decades and is mission-critical for production. As such, high uptime is a must – and high uptime can only be assured through high-class preventive maintenance and high-quality service. Moreover, nothing is “fail-proof”; therefore, regardless of the quality of product and maintenance, it is also critical for a vendor to offer easily accessible and rapid support in case of any kind of failures – and also to be able to afford rapid turnaround for spares / consumables when needed!
Our setup is fully in-house. We have around 30 service personnel located strategically across the country (14 locations across all the Regions) to be able to ensure that each customer is assured of rapid support whenever needed.We have Regional Managers for each of the four regions of the country, to ensure more granular management of service, and the Central team based at our HO in Mumbai oversees nationwide operations. Additionally, we operate a Central Helpdesk for complaint logging, telephonic support and online support. All of this is also supported with the fact that our Service team has access to even our R&D personnel in specific instances where support may be needed to resolve unique demands.
Our three most major strengths are: Research and innovation: we can support any and every kind of customer through any and every type of analytical need – pre-purchase as well as at any time through the product lifecycle;
Quality of Products and Services: We are fully ISO-certified in our business – including for our Service setup! Our products are built to the most exacting standards and our service is tasked with achieving customer delight (not just satisfaction);
Customer-proximity: We remain committed to our core values – the most fundamental of which is our commitment to customer delight. We leave no stone unturned in our quest to meet customer expectations – and often go well beyond even the written word to ensure that no customer is left wanting for lack of effort from our side.
The industry is continuing to evolve. in our field, innovation in our own country remains limited to us with the competition really coming only from overseas players. Among the international players, there’s been dramatic change. Our entry and our commitment to offering economic value-addition with a great value proposition, has seen these players dramatically drop prices, thus displaying just how much they were ‘milking’ the market in the past! Now, faced with a product and value proposition that is superior to theirs, they’re resorting to the final bet – dropping price! Indeed, some have even used their deep pockets to try a strategy of under-cutting our prices! The market could therefore be classed as more competitive than ever before. Retaining our position as market-leaders has therefore required us to push the boundaries of innovation as never before – and is a challenge to which we’ve responded with gusto! Globally, the market has seen consolidation. There are now very few large players that remain committed to the market – and I’m pleased to say that we are one of them!
Moving forward, the challenge for us will be to continue development apace – continuously delivering new offerings and setting new benchmarks in the market for what value an OES can add. Moreover, of course, we continue our research into newer areas of technology as well, something that will bear fruit in the second half of this financial.
Our vision remains that of being the partner of choice globally for firms looking for analytical instruments that we manufacture. We aim to be technology-leaders in each area we enter and to serve each of our customers in a manner that sets a new benchmark for the industry.
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