Castrol Shuts Its TN Plant For Higher Manufacturing Cost

 Another plants shut off due  to high manufacturing cost . Companies like Castrol  have decided to stop production in one of its oldest lubricant plant  .

A report

In one the glaring example of the increasing manufacturing costs, Castrol India Ltd, a unit of BP Plc, has announced that it is closing its plant in Tamil Nadu. According to a report in The Economic Times, it waa mentioned that in a BSE announcement, the company cited a steep increase in its manufacturing cost per litre over the past several months.

It was reported that the plant would be closed from July 31 and the manufacturing activities would be phased out. The manufacturing plant is located at Tondiarpet in Chennai. The company stated "The Tondiarpet plant is one the company's oldest plants in the country and was faced with a situation of high landed cost of base oil leading to a steep increase in its manufacturing cost per litre over the past several months. This had adversely affected the production activities in the plant.’’

The reports mentioned that the company has also offered a voluntary retirement scheme to its employees working in the said plant. Employees have opted to separate by availing of the benefits under the scheme. The announcement came after market close on Friday, according to the report.


Source
wheelsunplugged.com

Electrotherm Introduces Modular Continuous Casting Machine

Continuous  Casting machines are used by  small to large billet manufacturing plants . This new modular continuous caster would save space as well as reduce cost of production by reducing energy requirement in running continuous slab caster .Electrotherm is India leading induction furnace manufacturers

A report
Electrotherm (India) Ltd, a leading manufacturer of induction melting furnaces and allied equipment, in Hyderabad announced the launch of its innovative Modular Continuous Casting Machine meant for the ingot-making industry.

The new machine, developed after extensive in-house research, is especially designed keeping in mind the specific requirements of the industry and offers a host of benefits such as saving of Rs. 300-500 per ton on production cost of billet, low civil and installation cost, compatibility to existing plant and less space requirement. The new product is expected to add around Rs. 100 crore to the annual revenue of the company.

The idea of such manufacturing devise, better known as ECCM (Electrotherm’s Continuous Casting Machine) was conceived a few years back and its launch was much awaited by the entire ingot manufacturing industry in India. The company plans to organize a series of seminars on the benefits of this machine in all the key steelmaking hubs in the country simultaneously with the launch and the first one was organized in the steel township of Mandi Gobindgarh and Ludhiana.

Speaking about it, Mr. Suneel Kulkarni, President, E&P Division, Electrotherm (India) Ltd, said, “We have been all along concerned about the hassles of casting ingots through mould and all related problems. In line with Electrotherm’s vision and mission of providing customer centric products and technology, we conceived the idea such innovative technique a couple of years back and attempted to Indianize the casting process, which suits the needs of our clients in a perfect way.”

These casters are a revolutionary product that have been designed in such a way that they can be adopted by and installed in any ingot making unit and these ingot makers can comfortably produce billets cheaper than ingots and compete in the local market. “Our product addresses the need of the industry because it fulfills all the requirements. They come with a modular design that reduces the civil and installation cost, they can be installed in any existing plant, they consume less space and above all, one can produce the billet cheaper than the ingot,” Mr Kulkarni added.


source

Indiainfoline.com

How To Compete With Low Cost Country Manufactured Goods

Many  strategies can be employed  to compete with low cost countries manufactured goods with  first being to automate entire production thus increasing production many fold  and many more .

Labor rates in China, India and other developing countries are often 10 percent of the U.S. labor rate for the same skill and education.
Manufacturing costs consist of labor, capital (interest on borrowed money), energy, raw materials, real estate (rent), machinery and technology. The non labor costs are similar in all countries if the country's government doesn't subsidize its exporters.
The labor cost content of the total U.S. gross domestic product is about 50 percent. However, it varies from a few percent for industries like oil refining and chemical manufacturing where raw material and energy are the overwhelming costs to service industries where labor is about 80 percent of total cost. For example, assuming labor is 50 percent of your business's total cost, a competitor in a developing country paying 10 percent of the U.S. labor rate would have a 45 percent lower cost.

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Car Manufacturers Cutting Cost With New Technology

To better protect domestic factory jobs, Toyota Motor Corp. and other Japanese carmakers are intensifying efforts to cut production costs by introducing cutting-edge manufacturing technology.
The moves are being taken to counteract the erosion of profits caused by the yen's strength, which has prompted an exodus of manufacturing jobs to markets with cheaper labor.
Toyota on Thursday put into operation a new plant of affiliate automotive body maker Central Motor Co. in Ohira, a village in Miyagi Prefecture.
"We want to demonstrate that we can make vehicles that are superior in terms of both quality and price to those made overseas," Yasuyoshi Shirai, vice president of Central Motor, based in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture, said at the new plant.
The plant has an annual capacity of 120,000 units and will replace a factory in Sagamihara that will be closed at the end of March.
The Ohira plant features a new type of conveyor system on the assembly line that supports car bodies from below, instead of suspending them from above. This method allows for significant savings in construction and ventilation because the ceiling can be built lower.
Central Motor has also stopped using expensive, dedicated equipment to rotate the vehicle body on the assembly line, instead adapting a loading shovel for the task.

Carmakers cutting costs with new technology to save jobs