Students of the newly created Mechanical Engineering branch in AITS recently got to experience an industrial manufacturing shop-floor during their first Industrial-Visit, which was held on 24th October 2009. As is his wont, Prof. Ashok Malhotra, the very experienced Director of AITS, thought of ensuring that the curiosity of fresh students is ignited by exposing them to new experiences by organizing an industrial visit in the first year itself, instead of waiting till they are in the third year as was the practice till now. Accordingly, twenty bright, energetic minds set out to explore the real world under the supervision of three faculty members of the Mechanical Engineering Branch, namely Ms. Renu Bisht, Mr. Sumit Prasad and Mr. Ashish Saxena.
Their goal was to learn about shop-floor production at the manufacturing facility of Ms. Neel Metal Pvt. Ltd. (NMPL), which is part of the Jai Bharat Maruti Ltd. (JBM), located in the S. I. D. C. U. L. industrial estate at Pantnagar, Rudrapur. NMPL-9, established in 2006 at the Bajaj Vendors Park, manufactures pipes which go into the vehicles manufactured by Maruti and Honda. JBM was established as joint venture of Maruti Udhyog Ltd. and has plants all over India. It is surrounded by Minda on the left, sister concern Thai Summit Neel Auto at the back and High Technology Transmission System, a sister concern of Endurance Pvt. Ltd, on the right. In front of it are many other industries, including Lumax DK, Micro Turners and Suprajit Auto Ltd. Its basic products are steel tubes and are established as second tube industry of JBM group. And its expansion has included TATA Motors, M&M Pantnagar and Haridwar, MSIL Gurgaon in its major list of customers and soon it will be manufacturing for Ashoka Leyland and NMPL-9 has also expanded its product horizon from steel tubes to welded components and steel blanks and has regular supply of them. Its major product steel tube is supplied as ERW and CDW tubes both varies in the method of preparation and physical properties, the properties of CDW tubes is superior and is inherited from ERW tubes. The plant was established with installed capacity of 1250 MT of ERW and 500 MT CDW tubes per month. Now a blanking line with capacity of 2500 MT per month is installed lately. The current turnover of NMPL-9 plant is approx. Rs. 7cr per month and is linearly increasing.
The students returned from this visit ecstatic with the experience and brimming with queries and new ideas. These student feelings will surely reflect in the reports that they shall be submitting at semester-end. AITS is firmly committed to ensuring replication of this effort by organizing more such visits for all students across branches.
