The main objective of the testing facility is to enable the small and medium scale companies to test their machines and help them improve their quality to meet the stringent international standards.
This will also help them to gain foothold in the export market, IMTMA President, N K Dhand said. The new centre will have the means to field test machines, components and peripherals to analyse the tests and engineer solutions.
IMTMA has already submitted a formal proposal through CMTI to the Union ministry of heavy industries and is waiting for an approval, Dhand said. "The machine tool industry has been wanting to have a facility of this nature.
As individual companies cannot afford to have such a facility, it will be a big boon for them if it can be set up at this juncture as Indian companies are looking to upgrade their machines and solutions to the global standards in order to effectively compete in the global market."
The new facility is likely to come within the next six months at CMTI campus on Tumkur road. While the IMTMA will contribute about 30 per cent of the project cost, remaining will be funded by the government. The government had announced in the 11th plan document that it will support the capital goods industry to upgrade quality.
IMTMA is also exploring the possibilities of working with global companies in other countries and collaborating with major foreign machine tool institutes in the near future. This will lead to better brand building of the Indian industry as being quality driven in the long run, he said.
The testing facility will be developed on the model of Fraunhoser Institute for Industrial Engineering based in Stuttgart in Germany. The new testing facility will be an advantage not only for the machine tool industry, but also for CMTI as most of its existing machinery are outdated. The proposed facility will help CMTI modernise its testing equipment, an IMTMA official stated.
