Matrix interviewed some old Sanmar Engineering hands to try and jog their memory of the early days of the group, which had its beginnings with Durametallic India, soon to be followed by BS&B Safety Systems (India). Here are some excerpts:
M N Radhakrishnan
Chairman, Sanmar Engineering
32 years in Sanmar
Sanmar Engineering aims to provide total engineering solutions to clients. With its in-house foundry a reliable supplier of castings, and a services-and-maintenance outfi t that guarantees round-the-clock plant-site operations bolstered by a
countrywide network, SEC has, over the years, offered a network of facilities that meet the demands of the process industry. Technology management is the secret of the success of Sanmar Engineering.
It acquires the most appropriate, sophisticated technology through collaboration agreements with world leaders in the fi eld, internalises it, and then applies it creatively to the emerging needs of the Indian economy. We are specialists, not just somebody who has borrowed a technology.
Instead of buying a mechanical seal at Kalamazoo, you buy it in Karapakkam - it is the same product. The same goes for all our products. To pass on technology across international borders, a company should have a standing internationally. No company can rank no.1 without structured operations.
R Venkataramani
Senior Advisor-Quality
30 years in Sanmar Engineering
BS&B’s rupture disks are custom built. Each of them is fabricated. It is still continued the same way. The basic raw material is not consistent - the operator has to have the feel of the product to make it. The oldest operator has been here for 26 years. The process is based on the material. It is an art. There is no standard rupture disk. Training people is still a challenge. This job needs real talent, it is very specialised, so worker turnover is generally low. After my initial training at BS&B, USA, I had to come back and reproduce the set-up here. At that time, it was a real challenge. The concept was new. The products were new.
I had to learn, gain knowledge - it was unconventional manufacturing. When we started production, another key aspect was marketing of the products. The concept of safety was low in Indian industry. Whenever we talked to customers, we had to do a lot of educating on what a safety valve meant, how our safety valve was better than others, designed for ultimate safety – with two levels of safety. We had to give seminars and demonstrations to propagate the products. After the Bhopal gas tragedy, Indian industry woke up to safety hazards with a jolt. The awareness that something drastic could happen came.
Every industry started looking into safety. The Factory Inspectorate started insisting on safety features. This helped to promote our products. The petrochemical boom with Reliance and Finolex leading the pack was a major factor in our growth. We started supplying products to Nuclear Power Corporation (NPC). We have an excellent rating with them. We have helped them with solutions for ultimate safety in critical applications.
They have faith in us and appreciate our knowledge.For the fast breeder reactor, we developed a double disk assembly as a safety device to protect the inlet and outlet. We delivered a prototype for the fi rst time. India is working on this type of project, which is likely to commence by 2013. The entire world is watching all of us. It is one of our prestigious projects. It is also a high value project.
A special stainless steel is used. When Chandraayan went into orbit, we supplied a product that helped to prolong the orbit and helped take more pictures. Power plants, whether thermal or nuclear, are good business for all SE companies, they offer good opportunities.
The outlook is bright for the next few years. We are proud to belong to SE. We receive a lot of encouragement and enjoy freedom, the kind of freedom you do not get anywhere else. We are given a free hand in manufacture. There is transparency in the system, we believe in empowerment of people, treating everyone as equal, with no differentiation, no favours.
KR Varma
Chief Executive, Flowserve Sanmar
33 years in Sanmar Engineering
I have stayed here for so long, because of the kind of people—both peers and seniors—I work with and the stimulating work atmosphere here. I have moved from one company to another within the group every 4-5 years. I have worked in BS&B, Flowserve, Tyco, and FMC and that’s made things interesting and challenging, too.
I graduated from Trivandrum Engineering College and my fi rst real job was at Sanmar. I joined Durametallic in 1976. Gopi, Nagaraj and I joined on the same day.
Seshadri and Chandar (R Ramachandran) were there. MNR joined in 1979. That was the time we started setting up the plants. I had no formal training. The training was done by Sesh. I had no idea of mechanical seals. When I joined, one of the big jobs was from GE. I worked in our Delhi offi ce for fi ve years from 1981.
I moved to Flowserve in early 2009. I have come full circle. We upgrade our skills by interacting with people and through the resultant exposure. We do have some training programmes to prepare people to take higher responsibilities; we send people to establishments like Great Lakes and Kellogg, Singapore. My involvement with my team in skills-imparting is quite high – both technical and managerial.
The future for Flowserve and Sanmar Engineering in general is pretty good. We were not affected by the fi nancial downturn. At Flowserve, we took a conscious decision to focus on the domestic market. That helped; especially when India’s economy picked up, we started doing well. Now Flowserve does less than 5% exports. It is a conscious decision taken at the business level.
V Ramesh
Managing Director, Sanmar Speciality
Chemicals 20 years in Sanmar
I did M.Tech Thermal Sciences in IIT Madras, after graduating in engineering from GCT Coimbatore. It was my second job after SPIC. I joined on 16 August 1983. I had been Sundaresan’s customer for seals and he interviewed me.
I said I’d join if offered his post. When he was promoted as GM, I joined as Technical Manager. Dura was like a family, a very small unit with annual sales of Rs 3 crore or so. There were only 40 of us on a small shop fl oor and we all knew one another.
Sesh—down to earth and famous for his Madras lingo—had left for DMA, Singapore by then. MNR, with his own brand of humour, looked after the marketing function and RR (R Ramachandran) with his American accent and pipe-smoking, was the commercial manager. The very emotional Sundaresan was reporting to him. Radha moved to Xomox to start the new JV. I remember travelling by Ambassador car to and fro Karapakkam. With contract bridge a passion with my carmates, I was often the card table! Dura was very close to NS’s heart.
Kumar too was very involved, in fact trained in Kalamazoo. The competition between Dura and Sealol was to be seen to be believed. Every one of our sales engineers knew the product thoroughly and was convinced of its superiority. Each of us was committed to the product. The service engineers were at liberty to call us at any time or day and they did call us sometimes at midnight even from the customer’s premises. If a seal failed, our men replaced it in two days’ time. One of these men called me once from a factory in the north.
It was the weekend and the client would not allow him to go back until he solved his problem. He spent his weekend in the factory! Another time, Shyamol Chakrabarty, who is still in Flowserve, Kolkata, had to pretend to be a local, to escape paying some ransom when some thugs invaded a customer’s premises.
If they knew he was a visiting engineer, they would have demanded their pound of fl esh. Seven days after I joined, I was sent to the ONGC offshore platform on a trouble-shooting mission. I was quite prepared, as Sundaresan had sent me all the relevant product literature six months before I joined! Those were exciting times, with one new joint venture getting added every year.
Sesh was a great character, he got close to everybody in the company. There were frank, free and fearless exchanges among the various players. If Sesh was passionate, Sundaresan was equally so, tending to get emotional when Seshadri and he differed on technical matters. Radha with his wry humour would needle Sundaresan about what he claimed the market had faulted in our design, who would storm out to the shop fl oor, drawing in hand, after telling him the salespeople didn’t know how to sell.
Sometimes, Sesh the instrumentation engineer, and Sundaresan, the chemical engineer, argued over a mechanical engineering problem while I, the mechanical engineer watched silently. It was all healthy and constructive and I was truly inspired by all of them. I have great memories of my Sanmar Engineering days—the great team we had that included Ananthakrishnan, Sankaralingam, Kalyan, Patwardhan, Varma. The sales conferences were memorable occasions. I have fond memories of my training stint at Kalamazoo. The collaborators were most helpful.
I particularly remember my interactions with Bill Adams, their technical chief. We developed many seals at Karapakkam. The boiler feed water pump seals were a great success, as were the Tefl on Bellow seals. We specialised in agitator seals— some much bigger than our men! When Sanmar Engineering expanded, we gained exposure to the practices of all the JV partners. I participated in the development of the cell concept in factory layout—with cells like the gland cell, sleeve cell and Tefl on cell. We invited a lecturer from IIT Madras to address the employees on the cell concept.
Radha and other seniors circulated enlightening articles among the employees. I remember Chuck Knight’s articles on management.On the whole, it was an enriching experience. I was close to tears while moving on to Chemplast in 2003, so strong were the ties within Sanmar Engineering.
S Thiagarajan
Ex Vice President, Marketing
Sanmar Engineering
I joined Durametallic India in May 1982 as Marketing Manager. I was the third person into that position since its inception, following the enigmatic Chandar and Radha. Having come out of Best & Crompton, a company with a predominantly British culture, I was a little out of sorts getting into the skin of an Indo-American culture. Once when I sent a note to Chandar mentioning “the MD said so and so…”, Chandar asked me who this MD was. When I blinked he said in this company it was either “Sankar or simply NS”.
Sankar had established in the
organisation a work environment I would
term as “formally informal”. The Group
then had only DMI and BS&B and was
setting up the Dura Singapore unit. Also
activities had started for establishing
Xomox India.
Dura was headed by the late Sundaresan
as GM and had a core group consisting
of Raman, Ramesh and I heading fi nance,
technical and marketing respectively. We
three formed an excellent team supporting
and empathising with each other in the
discharge of our individual functions. In
later years as we evolved towards becoming
Sanmar Engineering, Raman went on to
head group fi nance, Ramesh headed Dura
and I took over as VP Group Marketing,
but such was our bonding that to this day
we remain good friends, in touch with
each other.