If ever a company had the right name, it is Quest Global. Not only is the US-Indian engineering services company constantly seeking opportunities for new business through its operations in India, the USA, Italy, Japan, Germany, France, the UK, Spain and China, it is, through its latest venture, on a mission to transform manufacturing in one home market, India.
Last month, Quest formally launched India's first aerospace-specific special economic zone (SEZ) in Belgaum, in the southern state of Karnataka. The zone - which gets standard SEZ benefits including exemption from India's import and export duties, and the freedom to borrow freely in foreign currency, particularly US dollars - gives Quest's overseas partners access to a complete engineering and manufacturing capability in a low-cost country.
IN THE ZONE
Quest's first partners in the SEZ are: SABCA, of Belgium, to make metallic parts and assemble Airbus A350 flap tracks; Magellan Aerospace of Canada (aero engine components); and Farinia of France (forgings).
Quest co-founder and chairman Aravind Melligeri - an India- and US-trained mechanical engineer - says the zone offers foreign partners a route to satisfying Indian offset requirements. But, he stresses, offsetting is easy to achieve, and although "customers may come for offsetting, they won't stay for offsetting".
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© Global QuestTypical scene, but novel for many an Indian engineer |
Rather, he says, the key to the SEZ is his concept of a complete design-to-build aerospace supply chain "ecosystem". So the plan has been to establish within the SEZ, through Quest operations and joint ventures, capabilities for surface treatment, machining, forging and shipping and supply chain management.
Melligeri notes that these very basic industrial capabilities are in short supply in India. Surface treatment, in particular, is not widely done to aerospace standards. And that, he says, causes real problems for manufacturers wanting to take advantage of the country's low labour costs; parts may be forged and machined in India, but without surface treatment, they cannot be assembled.
Other chronic problems associated with operating in India can also be overcome in the closed conditions of a private industry-driven SEZ. Power generation is a key problem, says Melligeri. Because of the unreliability of grid power in India, Quest, like many other private enterprises, is investing heavily in generation, and its shops are equipped to run from batteries, then generators and, as a last resort, the grid. The all-on-one-site concept also helps overcome India's road transport infrastructure problems, he says.
ON THE ROAD
Indeed, the poor quality of road transport is both a symptom of, and explanation for, the problems Quest faces in trying to expand its India operations. India went from being an agrarian economy to one with a strong services sector without really embracing an intermediate, manufacturing period. As Melligeri puts it, a company like Quest could take advantage of India's huge pool of highly educated - and English-speaking - engineers to conduct a global design business, going back to its first contract in 1997 to analyse gas turbine designs for General Electric. The internet is a reliable route to deliver those services. A manufacturing company, by contrast, has to physically transport materials and finished goods.
IT'S NOT CHINA
The contrast between democratic India and centrally controlled China is extreme. While China can, by diktat, deliver infrastructure and facilities to domestic or foreign ventures, Indian government does not have that power.
But infrastructure investment by private industry is a sustainable way forward, he says. "In India, we can't build a road to nowhere. The system doesn't allow it."
Ultimately, he adds, Quest - and perhaps India - has to become a manufacturer in order to advance. University-trained engineers lack a "feel" for how things are made and how they fit together if they have no shop-floor experience, hindering their ability to, say, program CNC machines.
Quest has often organised placements of its engineers in the factories of overseas customers. The all-inclusive capabilities planned for the SEZ will bring this human development home.
Quest's ambitions are clearly huge, and the challenges it faces are also great. But Melligeri sees equally great potential: "The aero-space market in India is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
Source: Flight International
