Bosch forecasts stronger growth in India

The Bosch Group is forecasting strong growth over the next few years for India, this year’s partner country of Hannover Messe 2015. The company expects to see positive development in the country over the medium and long term. This year, India’s economy is expected to grow by six percent.

Bosch India was most recently in the news for a lockout at its Jaipur plant, which manufactures fuel injector pumps and distributor pumps, due to ongoing worker unrest. Last year, workers at the company's Bangalore facility had struck work for over three months over wage settlement.

“The new Indian government is systematically addressing key issues such as infrastructure, education, and reducing bureaucracy. We are confident that this will positively impact the country’s development,” said Dr. Steffen Berns, president of the Bosch Group in India. Bosch, which has been active in India since 1922, continues to see a healthy business climate on the subcontinent. “Especially in the areas of mobility, infrastructure, industry, energy, security, packaging, and healthcare, there are many opportunities for our products and solutions. The field of connected production also opens up possibilities for Bosch in India,” Berns said.

The new ‘Make in India’ business initiative, for example, aims to advance industrialisation in the country and modernise production. “We believe that the use of intelligent and connected solutions in manufacturing will play an increasing role in India. Bosch is very well positioned for this,” Berns said.

With regard to connected industry, Bosch has a broad range of solutions such as drives, automation solutions, sensors, software, and predictive maintenance. In order to meet the standards required for connected production, Bosch is also cooperating closely with partners in Germany and abroad. One example is the company’s partnership with IT companies Tech Mahindra in India and Cisco in the United States. In conjunction with these two partners, Bosch is driving forward connectivity in industrial tools as part of the Industrial Internet Consortium.

Connecting industry in India
Bosch’s largest development centre outside Germany is located in Bangalore and Coimbatore in southern India, and employs around 15,000 associates. One of the centre’s areas of focus is on developing solutions for connected industry. For instance, its engineers have developed software which links all the machinery in a manufacturing facility and enables the collection and analysis of data in real time. This enables production status to be monitored and material shortages as well as machine failures to be resolved quickly.

Since 2014, the development centre in Bangalore has also been focusing on big data analytics. A software model for analyzing big data collected in manufacturing was also developed there. The model performs statistical analysis on the basis of algorithms, thus enabling specific predictions to be made and changes to be detected. It can be employed in factories, for instance, to reduce throughput times, enable predictive maintenance, and optimise resource use, as well as to improve the management of capacity, inventory, and logistics. Bosch uses manufacturing data at its plants in Bangalore and Jaipur to shorten throughput times in the testing and calibration of diesel injection pumps.

Worldwide, 20 of Bosch’s more than 250 plants are already equipped with RFID (radio frequency identification) logistics solutions. These are used in the diesel plant in Nashik, for example, where RFID radio tags monitor the workpieces’ progress through the factory by identifying the position of transport crates. The tags enable precise details to be known about the process steps each piece undergoes and when the injectors will be ready. This information can then be used as the basis for drawing up a schedule for packing, shipping, and installation.

In emerging markets like India, the company says it focuses on locally developed solutions that are tailored to the requirements of the local market. For instance, Bosch in India has successfully developed an electronic hitch control for Indian tractor manufacturers as well as a common-rail system for small engines. Last year, the supplier also developed an affordable and robust engine management system that is specially designed for the booming Indian two-wheeler market.

Bosch in India
Over the past decade, Bosch has more than tripled its sales in India, generating 1.2 billion euros in 2013. The company currently employs more than 28,000 associates at 11 manufacturing and development sites. Since 2010, the Bosch Group has invested around 680 million euros in the expansion of manufacturing and research facilities in India, including some 160 million euros in the past year alone. In 2014, a new research and technology centre opened in Bangalore which is focused on the development of connected technologies for the internet of things.