In March, 2016, Delta India announced the grand opening of its new plant in Hosur, India. The new plant was expected to supply customer needs in local markets soon after opening.
Delta's new Hosur Plant is close to Chennai and Bangalore where many technology and electronic companies are located. The new plant occupies 4,265 m2 with very convenient transportation, and currently only 1,750 m2 is used for manufacturing. As the major manufacturing site for Delta's industrial automation business group (IABG) in India, 90% of the products made in the Hosur Plant are variable frequency drives and 10% are PV inverters.
Under the lead of Delta Group's Senior V.P. and IABG General Manager Mr. Simon Chang, Delta began organizing the construction of the Hosur Plant in October, 2015. The IABG Sales V.P. Mr. Andy Liu, Motor Drive System Business Unit General Manager Mr. Gavin Chang, Plant Director Mr. Tyler Wei, and Delta India Operation V.P. Mr. KKSIM worked together to ensure the Hosur Plant fulfills the requirements for sales, productivity, and operations, as well as plant standards similar to Delta's Wujiang Plant in China. The Hosur Plant was constructed under the supervision of Wujiang's High Power Control (HPC) Plant Manager Mr. Paul Lin.
With highly effective execution, the IABG and India team spent half a year in constructing the Hosur Plant. They conducted a prior run and trial production in March, and held the grand opening in April. Echoing Delta's company policy of energy-saving, the Hosur Plant was designed as an energy-saving, low pollution factory. It adopts LED lights to lower power consumption, a low-noise air compressor, and an AHU system to reduce HVAC loading and operation time, providing a comfortable working environment while saving energy.
To further improve power efficiency in the Hosur Plant, Delta utilized and applied our own automation products to the production lines for energy savings. For example, the Active Front End AFE2000 Series was applied to testing motors and transforming potential energy generated during motor speed up / slow down into reusable power. The AFE200 Series was also used in the burn-in process for power regeneration.
For operation processes and product quality control, the Hosur Plant aligned with the Wujiang Plant and Taoyuan Plant standards. The Taoyuan Plant Manager Mr. Jansen Lo implemented the same manufacturing execution system (MES) of the Taoyuan Plant, and the IABG Quality Assurance Division Director Mr. Sean Chang built an automated quality assurance system with CE and UL international product certification to enhance product quality and customer confidence.
Throughout the construction process, the Wujiang HPC Plant Manager Mr. Paul Lin supervised and participated in every step, and applied Delta's automation products to the Hosur Plant to achieve facility automation along with the MES system, while saving manpower and cost. For example, Delta applied its SCARA robot for automated optical inspection and a power regeneration device for energy regeneration during the AC motor drive testing process. With the MES system, the Hosur Plant ensures the accuracy of every process and implementation to enhance product quality.
Mr. Paul Lin said, “During the organization and construction of the Hosur Plant, we encountered many difficulties, and the first one was cultural differences. The IABG's current manufacturing sites in Taoyuan, Taiwan and Wujiang, China are both in Chinese regions. We referred to these two manufacturing sites as models to build the Hosur Plant in India. However, our employees in India have different working habits and methods, and language and communication was another obstacle as well. Thus, we needed to make various adjustments during the construction. For example, the Indian team was not used to the MES system and had many discussions. In the end, we insisted that the Hosur Plant adopt the same MES system as the Taoyuan Plant and Wujiang Plant for coordinated and globalized management.”
The Hosur Plant is currently a temporary plant. As the production lines in the Hosur Plant continue to expand, Delta is duplicating features of its Taoyuan Plant and Wujiang Plant. Many facilities were transported directly from the Wujiang Plant to the Hosur Plant. Mr. Paul Lin said, “We're building our supply chains and manufacturing teams with the Hosur Plant. When the official, permanent plant in Hosur is constructed, we will move everything directly to the new plant with automated, smart production lines, and energy-saving facilities.”