Central Manufacturing Technology Institute, Bengaluru

Last month, I visited the sprawling and leafy campus of the Central Manufacturing Technology Institute (CMTI), located on Tumkur road in Bengaluru, along with my colleague, Venkatesh (UKTI).

The CMTI was established in 1965 with support from the then Czechoslovakian government. The institute falls under the ambit of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, and is currently headed by P V Shashi Kumar. The institute develops and advances manufacturing technologies for the Indian industry by leveraging its advanced facilities. I visited a few during my visit. These included ultra precision engineering, tribology, sensors and vision technology, and rapid prototyping among others. The institute boasts of a knowledge database covering a slew of areas related to manufacturing such as robotics, machine design, metal forming, and foundry practices, to name a few.

This reminded me of the Manufacturing Technology Centre (MTC) in Coventry, which I had visited earlier this year. Read my interview with the chief executive of the MTC here. The MTC is one of the seven catapult centres, which form the High Value Manufacturing Catapult. Essentially, the catapult centres are technology accelerators, which advance innovations to make them market-ready. In other words, the catapults fit across technology readiness level (TRL) 4-6 to bridge the gap between proof-of-concept and market actualisation.

One of the recent initiatives of the CMTI is Nano Manufacturing Technology Centre (NMTC), which serves to promote nano integrated manufacturing in the country. The thrust areas under the NMTC are nano metrology and characterisation, nano fabrication and nano product development.

Additive manufacturing is another focus area at the CMTI. At the Rapid Product Development Centre, rapid prototyping entails the use of Direct Metal Laser Sintering (DMLS) and Direct Metal Deposition (DMD) for fabricating and re-manufacturing metal parts for companies.

The institute is also pursuing research in micro stereo lithography for productisation and fabrication of parts (engineering & medical).

The institute has recently ventured into identifying and developing sensor technologies with the objective of providing sensor design, fabrication, and characterisation services to industry. The Applied Mechatronics Integration Facility at the institute focuses on developing and deploying vision based equipments/systems for automated inspection, and metrology and product development.

Recently, the CMTI created the Academy of Excellence for Advanced Manufacturing Technology (AEAMT) with the aim of producing job-ready engineers for the industry. A host of diploma courses and degree programmes are currently offered through the AEAMT.

On the collaboration front, the institute has signed several memorandums of understanding with national and international organisations.

Following the tour of the CMTI’s facilities, we had a good discussion with Mr Gurumurthy who reminisced about the visit of Dr Vince Cable, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to the institute in December 2013 to promote UK-India collaboration in manufacturing.

We had an engaging discussion on the current projects at the institute and future plans. As we left the institute, the thought of potential partnerships between the CMTI and UK Catapult Centres lingered in my mind! Well, the upcoming workshop on advanced manufacturing in Bengaluru on 12 September 2014 will help explore such partnerships and much more!

Drop me a line if you’d be interested in contributing to the bilateral dialogue.