Mr. Ravish Madan, Director,
Usha Hydraulics
Have you heard of Usha Hydraulics? It’s small engineering unit in Balkum, Thane. The day I visited was a quiet evening. All workmen had gone home early due to festivity. No metallic sound of sheet metal handling, No crackle or sparkle of welding. or reverberating noise of hammering. The noise is elsewhere, where Usha makes ripples. It’s a respected name in materials- a reputation built over four decades.
Says the Chief Executive, M. Ravish Madan: Usha Hydraulics has found its roots when the Hyper Group dealing in hydraulic cylinders was started by my father Mr. S.K. Madan way back in 1971 after his long innings in high positions in the Ordnance Factories and then in corporates like Eicher- Faridabad, Killick Nixon – Files Division, etc. Import substitution was his mission. And the company came out with a number of innovative products including hydraulic cylinders and long honing machines. for which the customers were Air India, Indian Airlines, Voltas, L&T and others.
Container Truck Loading System
It was in 1983 that Mr. Ravish Madan joined the family business after completing his Engineering from Manipal Institute Of Technology. “My training in ‘Hydraulics’ at CMTI and in ‘Pneumatics’ at IDEMA came in handy in my career.” Hydraulics is the heart of all Usha equipment. It’s highly dependable. A classic example is the brake in your car. Can you say it is unreliable?
Foray into materials handling
Usha Hydraulics made its foray into materials handling with Scissor lifts and Airport Handling Equipments like Baggage Conveyors and Scissor Lifts and subsequently it developed High Rise working equipments, Truck Loading Equipment, Stackers and Scissors, all engineered to perfection. Organisations like ITC, L&T, Hero Honda, Mercedes Benz, TELCO, Crompton, Tata Electric, Air India, TELCO, Nuclear Power Corp. and others accepted USHA products readily.
Today its range of products include Scissor Lifts, Dock Levelers, Truck Loading Systems, Hydraulic Coil Cars, High Rise Platforms, Car Lifts for industry as well as buildings and parking lots, Special Hydraulics, Goods Lifts, etc
Usha Scissor Lifts used at
Mercedes Benz
Usha’s niche
There are many who make similar products. But Usha Hydraulics has made a niche in customizing the products. The company goes deep into the application and develops need-based systems to cater to the exact requirements of the end-user.
The Scissor Tables enable access to all four sides and is all the time available unlike stackers, forklifts or overhead cranes. They can handle any weight from 50 kg to 50 T. The Scissor Tables are very easy to operate and can be controlled by single operator. The operation being accurate, these platforms can be used as a part of a sophisticated process control system or an individual handling equipment.
The applications can vary from lorry loading, material feeding, raised storage, machine filling, order picking, or load transfer. Usha rightly says that it .makes ‘Light Work of Heavy Loads’, thus enhancing productivity, efficiency and economy. Using these lifts, one can bring down absenteeism in the factories by keeping backaches and fatigue at bay.You spell out any application, Usha can develop a product to suit your requirement.”Some customers are not able to explain their requirements or give correct specifications. With the result, we have to visit the work site, sit with the shop floor people and understand the needs before going to the design board”. Mr. Madan is all praise for a select few and their collaborators for their understanding, co-operation and involvement in the development he undertakes. “‘
Every application is unique and every order is special for us.” Be a scissor lift for paper roll Handling (like in Times of India press) or scissor for unloading coils in a steel mill, scissor table mounted in a deep pit working above and below floor level to load very tall pallets(like at Maruti), or scissors in tanneries, chemical and pharma industries, scissor mounted on rails used for replacing heavy motors and generators, or tandem scissors in wood industry, Usha is excited about the engineering challenges it has to face head on. The scissors are also used as die loaders as much as order pickers in warehouses.
The high rise working platforms also have myriad applications like maintenance within factory sheds, maintenance of buildings, overhead plant maintenance, streetlight maintenance, aircraft maintenance and so on. These scissors are designed to provide maximum stability and larger working area, compared to telescopic type equipment.
Usha has also supplied Huge synchronized lifts of 5 x 5 metres with German make valves to serve as operators platform for vertical winding machines. The7 ton bobbin platforms supplied to Crompton-Kanjur works way back in 1997 are still giving peak performance.
High Rise
Maintenance
Platform
The company has supplied huge platforms of 23′ x 10 ‘ with a capacity of 20 T to Air India in ‘98 for engine testing. Similarly, its 2 T capacity rugged Scissor lifts supplied to Tata Motors are working continuously in three shifts. Usha has also developed special lifts for packaging industry and for ONGC for their flameproof electricals for offshore oil drilling platforms , etc
Usha’s dock levelers are being used by Atlas Copco(15 T) and Gillette for loading containers. The leveler supplied to ABB, Baroda is of 5 m length with a capacity of 30 T. The company also offers Scissors type Low height Lifts to operate at zero level. Goods lifts are also used with advantage in bungalows for lifting physically challenged persons.
The hydraulic Upenders from Usha facilitate smooth tilting of materials such as steel coils, cores, box packages, mandrels, etc. to facilitate further use of materials handling equipment like cranes and conveyors. These are made in various sizes upto 25 Tons.
The automobile industry has made best use of Usha’s ingenuity to design and make materials handling equipment for myriad applications – right from picking and placing, conveying components, assisting in assembly and even lifting cars in showrooms. The manufacturers include Volkswagen, Honda, Ford, Mercedes Benz, General Motors, Fiat and so on ‘”So all this boils down to one thing: you specify the application; we have the handling solution,” declares Mr. Ravish Madan.
Areas to improve
He laments that the old plants in India are highly inefficient by virtue of the plant layout which has not taken into consideration the logistics including Incoming materials, handling and storage, materials flow and dispatch etc. at the time of design and construction of the Plant. As a result, the workmen have to waste 75-80% of their time in collecting the inventory and pooling components on the production table. Had we taken care of these operations in the beginning, we can imagine the efficiency levels and productivity we can achieve.
Mr. Madan further feels that our engineers should learn to communicate the intricacies of the job and give clear cut specifications so that the whole onus of meeting the requirements will not come on the vendor alone. He doesn’t like anyone compromising – even his customer. “Like the Germans say these days, I hate the ‘chaltahai’ attitude anywhere’, he concludes. – P.K. Balasubramanian.