RUBBERY LIFE PART-V

ISO
While working with Modi Rubber Ltd. I participated in International Standards Organisation ( ISO) / TC-45 ( Rubber & Rubber products ) activity along with Indian Standards Institution (ISI), later Bureau of Indian Standard (BIS) and became the Convenor & then Chairman of TC-45 / SC-2, Testing Sub-Committee and took part in meetings of ISO TC-45 in different countries of the world for about a decade. Modi Rubber Ltd. sponsored me for all these years during 1980s enabling us to participate in the work and meetings every year in different countries for the ISO activity.

ISO / TC – 45 activity on behalf of the country involved lot of studies & laboratory experimental work using sophisticated instruments as well as secretarial job for sending comments, preparation of Draft Specification etc. Every year one member country hosted the meeting which used to last for 7 to 10 days, starting from 8.00 hrs to 18.00 hrs with one hour lunch break. All participants had to bear own all types of expenses for the total period and travel.

Standardization activity was slow and pain staking. Every point, technical or language & grammatical , was discussed & debated at length , put to voting for & against which had to be recorded , before accepting and proceeding further. Added to this often the subject was translated by interpreter from English to other language, primarily in French. Obviously the progress was very slow . Generally it takes about 5 years for finalization of a Specification starting from introduction of the subject.

After finalization by the Sub. Committee it has to be ratified by the main Committee and finally by the main body of TC-45. Then only it will be forwarded to ISO Head Quarter in Geneva for processing and printing. India did a good job during 1980s which got diluted slowly over the years with the retirement of certain key people who were active in this area. Besides the author some key people were Mr. M.M. Patel , Mr. M.S. Saxena of BIS , RRI Kottayam persons , later HASETRI persons etc.

IRCO

In the meantime, early 1980s we activated back the IRI Delhi branch which was in limbo and became the Chairman of the institute after some years. I, on behalf of Indian Rubber Institute, approached International Rubber Conference Organisation (IRCO ), UK for full membership with the support of AIRIA and academic institute like IIT, Kharagpur. For the first time we participated in IRCO Committee meeting at Harrogate, UK in 1987 and put forward the case of our membership with the strong backing of different countries like Germany, France , Yugoslavia , Russia etc. , representative of these countries were well known to me personally. India (IRI ) was accepted as a member of IRCO at this meeting. I should put on record of strong support of Dr.S.Wolff of Germany, Prof. J.B.Donnet of France , Mr. Lubijc of Yoguslavia towards the membership of India in IRCO against UK which was reluctant to let India in. Late Mr.D.C.Verma , ex Goodyear, was present in these meetings along with me and helped in the matter.

I represented the country and IRI in IRCO meetings held in different countries for over a decade, last being in 2003 at Nuremberg, Germany. Our active participation in IRCO Conferences and meetings over the years was highly appreciated. In the process we got the approval for holding the first ever IRCO recognized international Rubber Conference, Rubbercon 93 in India which was held at Delhi in February 1993 . It was a great success and opened up the avenue for fund raising for the cause of IRI activity and purchase of own offices all over the country. Fund raised from 1993 IRCO Conference was utilized for the purchase of IRI Delhi branch office, the first ever one in the IRI history. Subsequent conferences generated enough fund to establish the Council office at Kolkata after more than five decades of existence of IRI in the country. Similarly, Bombay branch also collected enough fund from their conference to purchase IRI Bombay branch office. This put an end to the nomad life of IRI functioning from different companies offices and got it’s own identity. This was a great achievement. I was instrumental to book 2010 for IRC Conference in India ( recorded in the minutes of the meeting during my time of IRCO participation ) and understand that IRI is going to organize the same in Mumbai in 2010.

Consultancy Activity

Immediately after leaving Modi Rubber Ltd. in 1993 , I started own Consultancy organization in rubber field in the name of “Polym Consultants” followed by “KPS Consultants & Impex Pvt. Ltd.” and established own office at Vasant Kunj, New Delhi which was shifted to Sheikh Sarai, Phase-II and finally to Devika Tower, Nehru Place, New Delhi. I never operated from my residence which is a common practice with the so called consultants who take up this title on retirement or leaving the job and start functioning from residence by simply printing a name card.

Soon I realized that there was a big gap in technical knowledge in rubber industry of medium and small scale, with respect to usage of proper material and processing to manufacture quality rubber products. Most of the industry had no Quality Control system and testing laboratory. Production and technology was driven by skilled mistri or foreman of the unit. This was more wide spread in northern belt. But they were highly enterprising and doing good business. With a little help towards better technology / process and material they could do much better.

Hence, when I approached different units all over the country, response was highly encouraging. With my past more than two decades of activity all over the country, also through IRI educational activity & conferences, I was already a well known figure in the country and once it was known that I am now working independently, I started receiving calls from all over the industry. Often, the working pattern was beyond the area of rubber technology – in other fields like market study, ISO certification, management system, training, education courses, sports goods etc. Our working activity was spread all over the country and many countries outside India.



Initially the consultancy activity was started with north Indian rubber industries which spread fast to all over India and soon to neighbouring countries. Subsequently, the activities were extended to all major Asian countries and to Russia.

Later, the company’s activity was extended to trading , import & export, as my son Anomitra joined the company after completion of his B.E & MBA degrees as well as short stint of work with industry. He brought in modernization and fresh ideas & shifted our office to prime location ( Nehru Place ) of Delhi. He started designing & manufacturing machineries at selected units and exporting to different countries. Similarly, specialty items were imported and marketed to Indian Rubber Industry.

Our activities were thus divided into two parts, Technical Consultancy & International trading.

Consultancy activity were further sub-divided in normal technical consultancy for the existing rubber units to solve their problems , carryout development work and modernization as well as quality control activity. The other more important activity was the Project Consultancy – to set up new Plant which would cover detail project report ( DPR ) , machinery, market etc. and Technical know-how for manufacturing the product. In the process we have worked for the projects for manufacturing different products like auto tyre & tube, cycle tyre & tube, industrial & printing rollers, railway items , sports goods, automotive components, rubber to metal bonded items, latex products , coated fabric, shoe & hawai and many other products over these 17 years.


My first client was Ralson India Ltd., Ludhiana with whom I am attached till date. I started with Ralson India Ltd. when it was a smaller unit and went through the period of major expansion & development , modernization and establishing of Q.C and R & D laboratory during last more than one and half decade. Today, Ralson India Ltd. is the largest producer of cycle / rickshaw tyres in the country. Later Ralson India expanded to the manufacture of auto tyres in a separate modern unit in Doraha , near Ludhiana.

For quite few years our consultancy activity was intensively carried out in the total of north India spreading over Delhi , Haryana, Punjab, Kanpur ,Meerut and other parts of Uttar Pradesh etc. Major activity for about a decade was in Punjab covering all major centers like Ludhiana, Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Hosiarpur , Amirtsar etc. Major industries in this area were involved in the manufacture of cycle tyre / tube , auto tyre , sports goods and hawai. We introduced Laboratory testing and Quality Control system with most of these industries besides introducing better technology and processing which helped in improvement of the product and also in cost saving. Initially, Shatabdi Express was not there and traveling used to take lot of time and also not comfortable. The units in North India were smaller and lacked in technology & quality control. They had no laboratory and regular testing system as well as did not have any suitable rubber technologists.

Similarly, activity in Haryana covered Gurgaon, Manesar & Ambala besides Chandigarh & Derabasi. Also some work was carried out at Baddi in Himachal.

Our consultancy activities covered other part of India as well like in Western India major work was carried out in Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Indore, Bhopal and in Gujarat state areas covered were Ahemadabad, Baroda etc. We carried out certain activity, some of the major project, in South India in places like Kannur (Tyre Plant ) & Rubber Board, Kottayam both in Kerala, in Bangalore in Karnataka, in Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh & Chennai in Tamil Nadu. Relatively lesser activity was in Eastern part of the country, some in Kolkata which any way did not have any more dynamic rubber industry. A number of work was carried out in Jamshedpur, now in Jharkhand. Of-course, regular activity was carried out with IIT, Kharagpur for academic and R&D purpose as well as organizing and attending Conferences on Rubber Chemistry & Technology.

Lately , since about two years, we have embarked upon a major Project work at Agartala, Tripura for Tripura Forest Development & Plantation Corporation Ltd. as well as with IL&FS Cluster Development for the development of Tripura Rubber Park , close to Agartala. The work is continuing.

Activity in Foreign Countries

Our major area of activity has been in the field of auto tyre sector. During these years we worked with many medium and smaller automotive tyre manufacturer who really needed help for technology and process improvement and benefited immensely with respect to quality and establish their product in the market – both domestic and export.

The major activity in auto tyre field outside the country was establishing a green field tyre manufacturing facility in Bangladesh, which, in fact , was the first auto tyre unit in the country established more than twelve years back with whom we were associated for a long period. Starting with production of small size tyres , it reached upto 16” tyre size about six years back when we departed from there. It was a great achievement to bring tyre technology to this backward area which lacked in all aspects - machinery, raw material, suitable skilled manpower and above all technical know-how . We had to take skilled persons from India and train local people over the period and introduce Quality control concept. Also they were trained for field performance analysis and interaction with fleet owners and customers.

In Bangladesh, we had a wide ranging activity covering a large number of rubber products manufacturing units making Rubber Roller, Bridge Bearing Pads, Shoe, Printing Roller, Cycle tyre / Tube , Retrading compound etc. During this period, we traveled throughout the country, from Chitagong to Syhlet, most of the activities were ofcourse in and around Dhaka. Bangladesh activity was for about a decade, from mid 90s, to mid 2000.

Similarly, we worked with tyre companies, established and new, in Nepal and Indonesia. Besides tyre industry, we worked with and established many non-tyre product manufacturing facility in these countries.

We were engaged by the only automotive tyre manufacturing unit in Nepal, near Gorkha for up-gradation of the technology & product quality. We worked for about two years and introduced many measures for improvement in the process and the product. However, this unit was very poorly managed and the output & efficiency of the plant was comparatively low and the people lacked motivation. Except one technical person , there were no experienced person of the tyre or rubber field which was a big hindrance in the implementation of the suggestions. The management and head office was far away in Kathmandu and communication system was not satisfactory. The original machinery and technology was from China of 1980’s and the unit needed lot of fund to change it to modern state which they could not afford. Hence, the desired result could not be achieved.

Besides this big tyre unit, Consultancy activity was also done with a medium size Rice Roller manufacturer over a period of time giving them input about machinery, processing, compounding, testing etc. The concerned person is still in touch with us.

In Indonesia the work carried out was with a large size tyre retreading company, manufacturing own retreading compound as well as doing tyre retreading. The units were near Bogor and another in Medan. Our job was to modernize and upgrade the compound & mixing procedure and tyre retreading system.

For project consultancy work, we have carried out many such activity out side the country as well like with Holland , Malaysia , Thailand besides other major Asian countries as explained below.

We were approached by a private European company in Russia for both R & D activity and marketing of a new product namely, a Carbon filler for partial replacement of Carbon black in different compounds, both tyre & non-tyre. Under this project we carried out intensive R & D activity regarding the application of this new filler i.e Shungit in different rubber compounds and presented the findings in different conferences in India, China, Korea, Japan, Malaysia etc. as well as published a number of Papers with these findings in different journals form India , USA (Rubber World ), China & Korea. This work took us to all these countries and Russia repeatedly to meet different rubber industry, including leading tyre companies of China, Korea (Kumho & Nexen Tire ) , Japan (Yokohama, Toyo & Bridgestone ) to hold detail technical discussion and making presentation about the product to these companies. Sampling of the filler were done to all these companies over a period of time who carried out Laboratory evaluation to establish it’s suitability. In some cases large number of truck tyres were made and sold to actual users to get feedback of it’s performance. Similarly, in India the product was evaluated in number of non-tyre products and had good response. Visits and samplings were made to different non-tyre product manufacturing companies in Malaysia with whom detail discussions were held to explain the suitability of the product as well as cost saving possibility.