Automotive News Canada - May 2019 - v2 - 17

* MAY 2019

DIVERSITY
INDIA BY THE
(GROWING) NUMBERS
* India's

top-10 automakers
in 2017 were Maruti Suzuki,
Hyundai India, Mahindra &
Mahindra, Tata Motors, Honda,
Toyota, Renault, Ford of India,
Nissan, Volkswagen.

* A total

Canadian companies need tool makers
and India is churning them out
ILLUSTRATION FROM ISTOCK PHOTOS

Short of designers,
Windsor shop opens
an office in India

* From April

2000 to December
2018, the auto industry attracted foreign direct investment
worth US $20.85 billion. Recent
announcements include:
- Hyundai

Ten designers and two other staff members in India have filled the hiring needs
of Windsor-based Cavalier Tool. The Ontario Skilled Trades Alliance said up to
41 per cent of the employers it surveyed in 2017 would hire more people if they
had the right skills. P H O T O : C AVA L I E R T O O L

recently celebrated the one-year anniversary of its office in India, Cavalier
Tool India (CTI), where 10 designers
and two other staffers have filled the
hiring gap.
"We have not put a design outside
to a subcontractor, which is a common practice in our industry, in over
a year," Galbraith said.

'THESE TOOLS LOOK DIFFERENT'

PHOTO SUPPLIED BY TIM GALBRAITH

auto industry became the
fourth largest in the world, with
sales increasing 9.5 per cent
year over year to 4.02 million
vehicles (excluding two-wheelers) in 2017. It was the seventh-largest manufacturer of
commercial vehicles in 2017.
exports grew 15.5 per cent
between April 2018 and February
and are expected to grow at a
compound annual growth rate
of about three per cent between
2016 and 2026.

WINDSOR CORRESPONDENT

Cavalier Tool tried subcontracting to
fill its void of experienced designers,
said Tim Galbraith, Cavalier's sales
manager. The eventual solution
was to open an office in India called
Cavalier Tool India.

* The

* Auto

By ROSEANN DANESE

WINDSOR, ONT. - THE YEAR WAS
2016, and the auto industry was on
fire. New model releases were at a
high mark. Sales were hitting record
numbers. And Cavalier Tool &
Manufacturing wanted to capitalize
on the booming sector.
The Windsor-based tool shop,
which employs 155 people, had the
capacity to do so, but like many parts
suppliers in Canada, it was short on
computer-assisted design (CAD ) technicians.
"It was the bottleneck," said Tim
Galbraith, Cavalier's sales manager.
"We didn't have enough people and
bums in the design seats to crank out
enough files and computer programs
to the shop in order to do more business."
But the design shortage no longer exists at the company. Cavalier

of 200,000 kilometres of
national highways are expected to be completed in India by
2020.

Two years ago, Cavalier tried to
fill the design void by finding subcontractors in southwestern Ontario,
Toronto, northern Michigan and
Chicago.
But with designers based in multiple cities, another problem surfaced:
The designs at one site were hugely dissimilar from those at another,
Galbraith said.
"A customer was looking at it, saying: 'I've got two parts done by different people. These tools look different.'"
Cavalier eventually found a company in India with offices in Chicago.
"They had the capacity," Galbraith
said. "They could take all of our work
so we wouldn't have to spread it to

15 different guys, and we could get
them to work with us and integrate it
directly into our system here."
It was working well, but it wasn't a
perfect system.
So in 2018, CTI was born. The office
is in Chennai, where the region's dozens of post-secondary schools churn
out tens of thousands of tool designers
every year.
Design files are worked on jointly by the Chennai and Windsor offices, fully integrated into Cavalier's
North American engineering department, seamlessly working in the
company's software programs, said
Galbraith.
"Our capacity has risen dramatically without adding any infrastructure," Galbraith said. "We have not
put in machines. We have not expanded our building."
Plans are in place to expand the
India operation, which has the capacity to house 30 designers.
"Maybe we'll do a little bit of manufacturing over there," Galbraith said.
"Maybe we'll share some best practices. It's part of Cavalier's global footprint." - ANC

plans to invest US
$1billion in India by 2020 to
launch new models as well as
electric vehicles.
- Mercedes-Benz plans
to boost the manufacturing
capacity of its Chakan plant to
20,000 units a year, the highest
of any luxury-car manufacturer
in India.
- Honda Motor Co. plans to
set up its third factory to launch
hybrid and electric vehicles, an
investment worth US $1.31 billion, its largest in India so far.
- In November 2018,
Mahindra Electric Mobility
opened its US $14.24 million
electric technology manufacturing hub in Bangalore, expected to increase the company's
annual manufacturing capacity
to 25,000 units.

Source: McKinsey & Co., Financial Times,
Government of India

PHOTO: ISTOCK

Automotive News Canada - May 2019 - v2

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