Techcon: Ahead in customer satisfaction race
Although a late entrant in the Indian marketplace,Techcon has established itself as a reliable fluid and dispensing solution provider. The company is committed to meeting customers’ requirement for higher accuracy and speed, while being able to handle more complex chemistries. In an interview,Rick Nuttall –Sales Director – Europe, India and Middle East, Techcon discusses the company’s journey in India, its focus on IoT and robotics to meet market requirements and the company’s future vision.
Q. Tell us about Techcon’s operations and journey in India? What were some of the initial challenges and milestones achieved in the journey?
India is a large market and the first challenge we faced was brand awareness and Techcon’s visibility in domestic Indian companies. In 2016, we added another regional manager in India to focus purely on our Techcon brand dispensing range. To this end, we appointed distribution partners, to ensure we were able not only to reach the Indian domestic customer but also support them commercially with products and with technical knowledge and applications. We were pleasantly surprised by customers embracing our brand and their inherent recall on Techcon as an international brand, awareness on our products’ attributes, even though we were a late entrant in the Indian marketplace.
Q. Being one of the leading fluid and adhesive dispensing products provider, how according to you the market has evolved over the years?
The market has increasingly demanded higher accuracy and speed, while being able to handle more complex chemistries. This, over time, has caused us to develop and widen our dispensing solution from pneumatic solutions with just needle valves and Diaphragm valves to offer auger valves, progressive cavity valves and jetting solutions. Alongside, to deal with the chemistries and the need to save production downtime we have developed valves with Disposable Material Paths (DMPs) to remove the need to strip down and clean valves in product, as materials either cure or require change. Our System integrators thus have comprehensive dispensing solutions for a wide range of chemistries, to be offered to Indian Customers.
Q. How are trends, such as automation, robotics and IoT impacting your segment?
Clearly, the demand for automation is on the rise everywhere. Customers are looking for more user-friendly solutions, top-end training and programming alongside control and maintenance. All our valves now have the option of a dedicated controller that is IoT enabled to allow remote monitoring, remote adjustment and process feedback. From a robotic perspective we are now launching a “smart” robot that can be programmed via an intuitive touch screen interface or utilize CAD file to increase speed and accuracy of automation programming.
Q. Tell us about your intelligent and automated solutions. What kind of demand are you seeing for these solutions globally as well as in India?
As noted already we are offering simpler, faster ways to program dispensing automation. Techcon is also adding additional labour saving features, such as laser height detection to automatically cater for variance in surface height on the applications. This improves the quality and repeatability. The image recognition functionality is added to improve the user experience when programming for new applications. Adding Innovative 2K packaging solutions is another way to meet the customers 2k dispensing demand innovatively. Techcon is on the forefront of the customer demand fulfilling journey in India.
Q. Which key industries do you cater to? Could you share some interesting application areas?
Our products have applications across numerous industries. Techcon’s focus is high accuracy dispensing. Key segments with this demand are electronics, automotive and medical device assembly. We can handle a wide range of material chemistry, requiring relative low volume dispensing as well where volumes are high or large-scale production environments. Techcon also works with integrators on custom automation solutions.
Q. How do you perceive India as a market? Comment on the opportunities and challenges that you see in the country in your segment?
The market in India is expanding very quickly, particularly where automation is required to scale up production and/or improve quality. Electronics has been a key segment in India for some time, but the emergence of electric vehicle technologies, LED market, mobile phone manufacturing is driving this growth. With the Government “Make in India Initiative” fuelling India’s growth as a manufacturing region could raise the challenge to more traditional regions from SE Asia and China.
Q. What would you describe as your niche? How do you stand out from the competition?
Techcon’s niche is our ability to offer a wide variety of solutions to a customer with high accuracy and quality requirements at a very competitive price point.
Q. What is your future vision and growth plans for the company?
Techcon will continue to expand its product range, to provide dispensing solutions for the ever-expanding range of chemistries customer use. Developing high accuracy solutions for applications with two-part materials which are becoming ever more common in manufacturing. Techcon also has a comprehensive range of plastic packaging and consumable products to complement its equipment and we would like to develop our market presence in India to help customer assess higher quality material which will improve their processes.
