The CEO of Atmus Filtration Applied sciences, Steph Disher, believes that India will probably be a strategic progress lever going ahead.
“India is essential to us as a enterprise. We’ve got a really robust place right here with our three way partnership of 35 years, Fleetguard Filters. It’s a vital enterprise with very robust manufacturing and distribution capabilities, robust buyer partnerships and we’ve been efficiently working and rising it,” she mentioned throughout a latest go to to inaugurate the corporate’s international functionality centre in Pune.
“I really see India turning into one of many quickest rising markets on the planet for us,” added Disher. It’s now effectively over a 12 months since Atmus was spun off from Cummins as a part of an effort to to strengthen its focus as a standalone entity on filtration know-how and gas components.
The Pune international functionality centre will probably be one of many key pivots for this goal and can make use of superior analytics to develop cutting-edge filtration applied sciences to satisfy the wants of vehicles and buses in addition to sectors like development, mining and energy technology. It’ll help the corporate’s international enterprise features of engineering, product administration, IT, provide chain and so forth.
Excessive ardour ranges
“It’s so energising for me to return and go to this group on the international functionality centre the place the degrees of engagement and fervour are simply so spectacular,” mentioned Disher. Past the truth that ladies account for practically 40 p.c of the workforce right here, there may be the added benefit of attracting expertise and “opening up the aperture” to the Indian inhabitants.
“There may be simply a lot range within the group and, extra broadly, when it comes to the areas of India that they arrive from. I skilled a wealthy show of all of the cultural variations throughout the nation introduced in dances and it simply exhibits that we’re actually drawing expertise from all throughout the nation,” mentioned Disher.
Avani Shah, Atmus India World Functionality Centre Chief, added that the “wonderful expertise” pool had a big chunk of girls coming from engineering backgrounds. “With the sort of help that we offer to your entire group, we are able to do extra when it comes to utilizing the talents obtainable in India. I clearly see lots of progress alternatives for workers in Atmus India,” she elaborated.
Disher reiterated that the worldwide functionality centre was not simply in regards to the India market however in constructing a group and capabilities for the worldwide enterprise. “We’ve got engineering, technical and IT capabilities that we’re constructing and exploring as a brand new firm. We are going to then take a look at increasing these from the India group to the remainder of our international operations,” she mentioned.
Difficult occasions
On the realities of accelerating international volatility and uncertainty in companies and politics, Disher admitted these have been troublesome occasions for a CEO although it was now just about par for the course. “I might say we’ve had robust occasions in latest occasions. I moved my household to the US within the midst of Covid and took on the brand new position of working the worldwide filtration enterprise on the time, which was Cummins Filtration,” she recounted.
One of many firm’s main prospects was upset as a result of “we had one thing like $200,000 of again orders” which turned “a lot, a lot greater than that” and going into tens of millions and tens of millions of {dollars} because the enterprise headed into early 2021. Moreover, there have been provide chain challenges and vital constraints in uncooked materials merchandise corresponding to metal “which is a main a part of our product vary”.
Everyone throughout the automotive ecosystem was then confronted with excessive challenges and Disher recalled having having common critiques and escalation calls with suppliers. “We have been having to essentially take a look at deeply the resilience of our provide chain and once you come by means of one thing like that, you realise simply what you and the organisation are able to,” she defined.
Greg Hoverson, Chief Technical Officer of Atmus, added that there have been many adjustments additionally taking place throughout markets the place emission norms have been seeing a transition to several types of automobiles. “Our know-how is round separating contaminants from fluids, and no matter which kind of zero emission automobile there may be, there are nonetheless some ranges of fluid and cleanliness required. This is a chance for us to proceed to transition our know-how to have the ability to ship merchandise in these areas,” he mentioned.
Improved filtration ranges
In response to Hoverson, there can be a greater variety of other fuels utilization throughout this transition. Therefore, whether or not this was compressed pure fuel, LNG, biofuels, hydrogen and so forth, all these choices would “actually drive the necessity for improved ranges of filtration” for the gas methods to run correctly and ship the identical service intervals.
Atmus, he added, had the flexibility to reply to completely different emission laws the world over when it comes to the timing of know-how transition. From the corporate’s standpoint, this could imply an adoption of know-how to have the ability to serve completely different electrification markets.
“Our know-how doesn’t need to be reborn, so to talk, however we’ve to tailor it to have the ability to present, say, the gearbox filter for a battery electrical automobile which isn’t distinctly completely different from a know-how standpoint than loop filtration merchandise that we make at present,” mentioned Hoverson.
If the world or a special area of the market transits extra rapidly to gas cell automobiles, the cathode air filters or deionised water filters in that house are “pretty much like among the merchandise that we’ve in our gas and air filtration product areas at present”.
