Make In India Opens $20-bn Defence Market To Pvt Sector

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ABPABPABP CORPORATE09 Dec, 2014 19:16 ISTMake In India Opens $20-Bn Defence Market To Pvt SectorThe private sector is counting on is increase in defence budget in the coming yearsNinad D Sheth
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Make In India Opens $20-bn Defence Market To Pvt Sector
155 mm advanced Howitzer to replace Indian army's aging Bofors guns (Pic by Reuters)
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In opening up defence equipment manufacture - for long a state monopoly -- the Modi government has created a $20-billion opportunity for the private sector over the next five years.

These include the hull for a nuclear submarine which L&T is building as well as transport aircraft for the Indian Airforce where the Tata group has shown interest.

Add to this the bullet proof jackets currently being tested for the Indian Army to be produced by Gujarat Forensic Science Limited and building corvettes for the navy for which Pipvav defence and ABG shipyards - both private sector firms -- are likely to bid.

The list is getting longer by the day.

This push by the private sector extends to high altitude clothing and the recently approved acquisition of 155 mm Howitzers, 100 of which will be bought off the shelf and at least 350 more made in India with an Indian firm.

There is a excitement as India, the world's largest arms importer, shifts gears to manufacture weapons at home.

Sukarn Singh, Director at Tata Advance Systems, the defence company of the Tata group, puts the opportunity in perspective, "The actual opportunities for Indian companies to manufacture weapons and weapons systems are very large. An entire ecosystem is coming together in the defence equipment market. Defence is a crucial area where make in India will play a large role."

Prasan Firodia, MD Force Motors agrees. "With the new government's focus on 'Make in India', the automobile industry has a great opportunity. Our products at Force Motors are capable of meeting the Defense requirements and expectations. This initiative of indigenisation is a welcome move," says Firodia.

New policies open up specific sectors as government pushes for make in India.

The last union budget allowed 49 per cent foreign direct investment in defence. While this leaves the tricky question of parting with proprietary technology unanswered - it has still led to a rush for joint ventures such as the one between Tata Advance Systems and Airbus for the tender to replace India's ageing Avro aircraft fleet.

Sources in the Defence Ministry say that the new defence minister Manohar Parrikar is keen to get the 'Make in India' model operational in indigenous defence contracts. India has announced that the six submarines that the navy needs will now be made in India and not imported. This is a Rs 70,000-crore order but shipyard capability is for now unavailable for a project of this scale. The private sector could step in and furnish the infrastructure.

An important reason for the Indian defence industry's likely growth is also the so called "defence offset clause" applicable to India's imported weapon purchases.

Any purchase that is above Rs 300 crore in value needs to get at least 30 per cent of the purchase order sourced from local Indian companies. This will allow for both technology absorption and built scale over time.

According to a recent report by Mckinsey, a management consultancy, offsets worth $4 billion have been awarded since the policy came into existence. With big ticket Defence acquisitions now under active consideration, offsets could growth to $10 billion within a decade.

Prof Harsh V, part of the Department of Defence Studies at King's College London, who has worked extensively on India defence industry explains, "After decades of waiting, finally it seems there is an opportunity for the Indian corporate sector to enter the defence industry in a substantive manner. So the excitement is genuine. The Modi government has given indications that it is serious about defence indigenization. It was long overdue and now that a shift from the public to the private sector is happening, it bodes well for the country. The private sector's entry is needed to make the defence sector more efficient and productive. But it will be tough road ahead for the private sector as well. "

One factor that the private sector is counting on is increase in defence budget in the coming and subsequent years. This is likely as India's weapon acquisition will need a planned boost in the defence budget. The military budget is at Rs 2.29 lakh crore ($38.35 billion) for 2014-15, Rs 5,000 crore more than what the previous government agreed in an interim budget earlier this year.

The Maintenance Business
Apart from producing new weapons, there is a huge market in maintenance of current weapon inventory. The armed forces are gradually opening this business up for the private sector.

Home-grown defence firms are looking seriously at the newly opened space for maintenance of military equipment which is likely to be a $5 billion a year opportunity.

Here IAF has a yearly maintenance requirement of about $3 billion while the Navy could outsource about $1 billion military maintenance contracts to private shipyards in 2015.  The army too has upgrade and maintenance requirements of an estimated $1 billion a year for its vehicles, weapons and computer networks that will be gradually be opened up to the private sector.

The Software Opportunity
The domestic defence opportunity goes far beyond making hardware. There is a new paradigm to warfare - it's called the revolution in military affairs. This is the warfare of the 21st century and for this software, high speed computing, advanced sensors and remote sensing are the new vistas for the private sector.

These are thought to be worth $2 billion a year and analysts believe are increasing in value.  Especially important is the role of private Indian software firms. Infosys for example has a dedicated aerospace team and is focused on developing flight control systems, flight management systems and flat panel cockpit displays for primary flight, navigation and engine information systems are also on offer.

HCL has been active for the last few years in the aerospace domain and has executed about 850 projects in the aerospace sector. It is increasing its defence team and is poised to bid for several defence contracts especially in the aerospace domain where they have expertise.

TCS has a dedicated Aerospace excellence centre with 2000 consultants working on various projects.

The opportunity thus is being leveraged by corporate sector. Currently India imports 70 per cent of its defence needs mostly from Israel, the US and Russia. If that number can be cut even by half over the next ten years it could lead to a domestic military industrial complex and that is a multibillion dollar play.

The Private Sector & Domestic Defence
Bharat Forge: A 155 mm advanced Howitzer to replace Indian army's aging Bofors guns has been domestically manufactured with technology from a Swiss acquisition of the firm Ruag.  The firm is getting ready to leverage the 'Make in India' opportunity and has set up a JV with Israeli major Elbit systems and will reportedly develop a mountain howitzer through this joint venture.

Tata Advanced Systems and Airbus - a $2 billion deal to manufacture C295 transport aircraft in India to replace ageing Avros. The Tatas also plan to bid for sensors and rocket launchers for the army and the navy.  A separate plan is to make radars for the Navy and the Airforce.

Mahindra & Mahindra has a special division called Mahindra Defence which is making the Axe combat vehicle designed for the Indian Army and the Special Forces of foreign armies.  Its 140 HP, four-cylinder diesel engine and Mercedes-Benz transmission deliver high performance in the roughest situations.  Lightweight and high-payload, the Axe can carry six crew with full battle loads.

L&T Defence is the leading contender for the six India-made submarines project. It is already involved in the construction of the hull for India's nuclear submarine and has invested nearly a billion dollars in its defence business.  It is also in the race to supply the Indian Navy landing platform Docks. These are huge ships meant to compliment amphibious assault missions and with helicopters, troops and assorted mission compatible equipment abord.

Godrej is also very active in the defence sector. It has already produced 40 airframes for the supersonic Brahmos missile which is developed jointly by India and Russia.  It has an ordered for another 100 missile frames from Brahmos.  Godrej has a specialised division called Godrej Precision systems that concentrates on the maintainance business including assembled parts for defence systems.

Reliance Industries Ltd has tied up with Dassault of France and will likely make a foray in the fighter jets segment

Punj Lloyd is in the race to manufacture combat vehicles for the Indian army a market thought to be worth $1billion over the next five years.  It is also concentrating on the big maintenance business that is likely to flow to the private sector as well as value engineering specialized services a fast developing niche.

Wipro is looking to offer its software expertise in the Avionics - Control computers, fuel systems, hydraulic systems, and flight controls market estimated to be in the region of $1 billion a year.

$2.25 billion programme for corvettes for which two private sector Shipyards ABG shipyard, and Pipvav defence are likely to bid.

Force Motors, the Pune-based automobile firm is venturing into the defence business with a slew of offerings including a military Ambulance and an all terrain Force 4x4 vehicles. It has won the tender for 450 light combat Vehicles for the Indian Army. It will supply the Trishul combat vehicle.

According to a recent report by Mckinsey, a management consultancy, Offsets worth $4 billion have been awarded since the policy came into existence.
India's defence budget is likely to continue to grow by 10 per cent for capital expenditure each year over the next five years.

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PROTECTION CLASS of electrical equipment

PROTECTION CLASS

The IP (Ingress Protection) rating system is published by the IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) and classifies the degree of protection that the enclosure provides against solid objects and liquids in order to operate the enclosed electrical equipment.

	Protection Against Solid Objects  Protection Against Liquids

Protection Against Solid Objects
0	No Protection
1	Protected Against Solid Objects Bigger than 50mm e.g. Hands
2	Protected Against Solid Objects Bigger than 12 mm, e.g. Persons Fingers
3	Protected Against Solid Objects Bigger than 2.5 mm e.g. Tools, Thick Wires
4	Protected Against Solid Objects Bigger than 1 mm e.g. Wires, Screws
5	Protected Against Dust Limited Ingress (no Harmful Deposit)
6	Totally Protected Against Dust.

Protection Against Liquids
0	No Protection
1	Protection Against Vertically Falling Dripping Water
2	Protection Against Dripping Water up to 15° from Vertical
3	Protected Against Direct Sprays of Water up to 60° from Vertical
4	Protected Against Water Splashing from any Direction
5	Protected Against Low Pressure Water Jets from any Direction
6	Protected Against High Pressure Water Jets from any Direction
7	Protected Against Immersion up to 1 m
8	Protected Against Long Periods of Immersion under Pressure

IP69K

IP69K is a rating of the German standard DIN 40050-9 extending the IEC 60529 rating system described above. IP69K is developed for areas where extra protection is needed against high-pressure and high-temperature. Typical applications that require this rating are mobile machinery and food industry where equipment is cleaned intensively with high pressure or steaming water.

Comparing NEMA and IP Enclosure Ratings

This is a cross reference for comparing NEMA and IP enclosure ratings. This comparison is only approximate, and it is the responsibility of the user to verify the enclosure rating necessary for the given application.

NANDAN does not accept liability for the integrity of this message or for any changes, which may occur in transmission due to network, machine or software failure or manufacture or operator error. Although this communication and any files transmitted with it are believed to be free of any virus or any other defect which might affect any computer or IT system into which they are received and opened, it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that they are virus free and no responsibility will be accepted by NANDAN for any loss or damage arising in any way from receipt or use thereof.

Article|McKinsey Quarterly

Change leader, change thyself

Anyone who pulls the organization in new directions must look inward as well as outward.

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/leading_in_the_21st_century/change_leader_change_thyself

March 2014 | byNate Boaz and Erica Ariel Fox

Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist, famously wrote, "Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."

Tolstoy's dictum is a useful starting point for any executive engaged in organizational change. After years of collaborating in efforts to advance the practice of leadership and cultural transformation, we've become convinced that organizational change is inseparable from individual change. Simply put, change efforts often falter because individuals overlook the need to make fundamental changes in themselves.¹

Building self-understanding and then translating it into an organizational context is easier said than done, and getting started is often the hardest part. We hope this article helps leaders who are ready to try and will intrigue those curious to learn more.

Organizations don't change—people do

Many companies move quickly from setting their performance objectives to implementing a suite of change initiatives. Be it a new growth strategy or business-unit structure, the integration of a recent acquisition or the rollout of a new operational-improvement effort, such organizations focus on altering systems and structures and on creating new policies and processes.

To achieve collective change over time, actions like these are necessary but seldom sufficient. A new strategy will fall short of its potential if it fails to address the underlying mind-sets and capabilities of the people who will execute it.

McKinsey research and client experience suggest that half of all efforts to transform organizational performance fail either because senior managers don't act as role models for change or because people in the organization defend the status quo.² In other words, despite the stated change goals, people on the ground tend to behave as they did before. Equally, the same McKinsey research indicates that if companies can identify and address pervasive mind-sets at the outset, they are four times more likely to succeed in organizational-change efforts than are companies that overlook this stage.

Look both inward and outward

Companies that only look outward in the process of organizational change—marginalizing individual learning and adaptation—tend to make two common mistakes.

The first is to focus solely on business outcomes. That means these companies direct their attention to what Alexander Grashow, Ronald Heifetz, and Marty Linsky call the "technical" aspects of a new solution, while failing to appreciate what they call "the adaptive work" people must do to implement it.³

The second common mistake, made even by companies that recognize the need for new learning, is to focus too much on developing skills. Training that only emphasizes new behavior rarely translates into profoundly different performance outside the classroom.

In our work together with organizations undertaking leadership and cultural transformations, we've found that the best way to achieve an organization's aspirations is to combine efforts that look outward with those that look inward. Linking strategic and systemic intervention to genuine self-discovery and self-development by leaders is a far better path to embracing the vision of the organization and to realizing its business goals.

What is looking inward?

Looking inward is a way to examine your own modes of operating to learn what makes you tick. Individuals have their own inner lives, populated by their beliefs, priorities, aspirations, values, and fears. These interior elements vary from one person to the next, directing people to take different actions.

Interestingly, many people aren't aware that the choices they make are extensions of the reality that operates in their hearts and minds. Indeed, you can live your whole life without understanding the inner dynamics that drive what you do and say. Yet it's crucial that those who seek to lead powerfully and effectively look at their internal experiences, precisely because they direct how you take action, whether you know it or not. Taking accountability as a leader today includes understanding your motivations and other inner drives.

For the purposes of this article, we focus on two dimensions of looking inward that lead to self-understanding: developing profile awareness and developing state awareness.

Profile awareness

An individual's profile is a combination of his or her habits of thought, emotions, hopes, and behavior in various circumstances. Profile awareness is therefore a recognition of these common tendencies and the impact they have on others.

We often observe a rudimentary level of profile awareness with the executives we advise. They use labels as a shorthand to describe their profile, telling us, "I'm an overachiever" or "I'm a control freak." Others recognize emotional patterns, like "I always fear the worst," or limiting beliefs, such as "you can't trust anyone." Other executives we've counseled divide their identity in half. They end up with a simple liking for their "good" Dr. Jekyll side and a dislike of their "bad" Mr. Hyde.

Finding ways to describe the common internal tendencies that drive behavior is a good start. We now know, however, that successful leaders develop profile awareness at a broader and deeper level.

State awareness

State awareness, meanwhile, is the recognition of what's driving you at the moment you take action. In common parlance, people use the phrase "state of mind" to describe this, but we're using "state" to refer to more than the thoughts in your mind. State awareness involves the real-time perception of a wide range of inner experiences and their impact on your behavior. These include your current mind-set and beliefs, fears and hopes, desires and defenses, and impulses to take action.

State awareness is harder to master than profile awareness. While many senior executives recognize their tendency to exhibit negative behavior under pressure, they often don't realize they're exhibiting that behavior until well after they've started to do so. At that point, the damage is already done.

We believe that in the future, the best leaders will demonstrate both profile awareness and state awareness. These capacities can develop into the ability to shift one's inner state in real time. That leads to changing behavior when you can still affect the outcome, instead of looking back later with regret. It also means not overreacting to events because they are reminiscent of something in the past or evocative of something that might occur in the future.⁴

Close the performance gap

When learning to look inward in the process of organizational transformation, individuals accelerate the pace and depth of change dramatically. In the words of one executive we know, who has invested heavily in developing these skills, this kind of learning "expands your capacity to lead human change and deliver true impact by awakening the full leader within you." In practical terms, individuals learn to align what they intend with what they actually say and do to influence others.

Erica Ariel Fox's recent book, Winning from Within,⁵ calls this phenomenon closing your performance gap. That gap is the disparity between what people know they should say and do to behave successfully and what they actually do in the moment. The performance gap can affect anyone at any time, from the CEO to a summer intern.

This performance gap arises in individuals partly because of the profile that defines them and that they use to define themselves. In the West in particular, various assessments tell you your "type," essentially the psychological clothing you wear to present yourself to the world.

To help managers and employees understand each other, many corporate-education tools use simplified typing systems to describe each party's makeup. These tests often classify people relatively quickly, and in easily remembered ways: team members might be red or blue, green or yellow, for example.

There are benefits in this approach, but in our experience it does not go far enough and those using it should understand its limitations. We all possess the full range of qualities these assessments identify. We are not one thing or the other: we are all at once, to varying degrees. As renowned brain researcher Dr. Daniel Siegel explains, "we must accept our multiplicity, the fact that we can show up quite differently in our athletic, intellectual, sexual, spiritual—or many other—states. A heterogeneous collection of states is completely normal in us humans."⁶ Putting the same point more poetically, Walt Whitman famously wrote, "I am large, I contain multitudes."

To close performance gaps, and thereby build your individual leadership capacity, you need a more nuanced approach that recognizes your inner complexity. Coming to terms with your full richness is challenging. But the kinds of issues involved—which are highly personal and well beyond the scope of this short management article—include:

• What are the primary parts of my profile, and how are they balanced against each other?
• What resources and capabilities does each part of my profile possess? What strengths and liabilities do those involve?
• When do I tend to call on each member of my inner executive team? What are the benefits and costs of those choices?
• Do I draw on all of the inner sources of power available to me, or do I favor one or two most of the time?
• How can I develop the sweet spots that are currently outside of my active range?

Answering these questions starts with developing profile awareness.

Leading yourself—and the organization

Individuals can improve themselves in many ways and hence drive more effective organizational change. We focus here on a critical few that we've found to increase leadership capacity and to have a lasting organizational impact.

1. Develop profile awareness: Map the Big Four

While we all have myriad aspects to our inner lives, in our experience it's best to focus your reflections on a manageable few as you seek to understand what's driving you at different times. Fox's Winning from Within suggests that you can move beyond labels such as "perfectionist" without drowning in unwieldy complexity, by concentrating on your Big Four, which largely govern the way individuals function every day. You can think of your Big Four as an inner leadership team, occupying an internal executive suite: the chief executive officer (CEO), or inspirational Dreamer; the chief financial officer (CFO), or analytical Thinker; the chief people officer (CPO), or emotional Lover; and the chief operating officer (COO), or practical Warrior (exhibit).

Exhibit

Executives can achieve self-understanding, without drowning in unwieldy complexity, by concentrating on the Big Four of their 'inner team.'

• Enlarge

How do these work in practice? Consider the experience of Geoff McDonough, the transformational CEO of Sobi, an emerging pioneer in the treatment of rare diseases. Many credit McDonough's versatile leadership with successfully integrating two legacy companies and increasing market capitalization from nearly $600 million in 2011 to $3.5 billion today.

From our perspective, his leadership success owes much to his high level of profile awareness. He also displays high profile agility: his skill at calling on the right inner executive at the right time for the right purpose. In other words, he deploys each of his Big Four intentionally and effectively to harness its specific strengths and skills to meet a situation.

McDonough used his inner Dreamer's imagination to envision the clinical and business impact of Sobi's biological-development program in neonatology. He saw the possibility of improving the neurodevelopment of tiny, vulnerable newborns and thus of giving them a real chance at a healthy life.

His inner Thinker's assessment took an unusual perspective at the time. Others didn't share his evaluation of the viability of integrating one company's 35-year legacy of biologics development (Kabi Vitrum— the combined group of Swedish pharmaceutical companies Kabi and Vitrum—which merged with Pharmacia and was later acquired, forming Biovitrum in 2001) with another's 25-year history of commercializing treatments for rare diseases (Swedish Orphan), to lead in a rare-disease market environment with very few independent midsize companies.

Rising to a separate, if related, challenge, McDonough called on his inner Lover to build bridges between the siloed legacy companies. He focused on the people who mattered most to everyone—the patients—and promoted internal talent from both sides, demonstrating his belief that everyone, whatever his or her previous corporate affiliation, could be part of the new "one Sobi."

Finally, bringing Sobi to its current levels of success required McDonough to tell hard truths and take some painful steps. He called on his inner Warrior to move swiftly, adding key players from the outside to the management team, restructuring the organization, and resolutely promoting an entirely new business model.

2. Develop state awareness: The work of your inner lookout

Profile awareness, as we've said, is only the first part of what it takes to look inward when driving organizational change. The next part is state awareness.

Leading yourself means being in tune with what's happening on the inside, not later but right now. Think about it. People who don't notice that they are becoming annoyed, judgmental, or defensive in the moment are not making real choices about how to behave. We all need an inner "lookout"—a part of us that notices our inner state—much as all parents are at the ready to watch for threats of harm to their young children.⁷

For example, a senior executive leading a large-scale transformation remarked that he would like to spend 15 minutes kicking off an important training event for change agents to signal its importance. Objectively speaking, he would probably have the opposite of the intended effect if he said how important the workshop was and then left 15 minutes into it.

What he needed at that moment was the perception of his inner lookout. That perspective would see that he was torn between wanting to endorse the program, on the one hand, and wanting to attend to something else that was also important, on the other. With that clarity, he could make a choice that was sensible and aligned: he might still speak for 15 minutes and then let people know that he wished he could stay longer but had a crucial meeting elsewhere. Equally, he might realize the negative implications of his early departure under any circumstances, decide to postpone the later meeting, and stay another couple of hours. Either way, the inner lookout's view would lead to more effective leadership behavior.

During a period of organizational change, it's critical that senior executives collectively adopt the lookout role for the organization as a whole. Yet they often can't, because they're wearing rose-tinted glasses that blur the limitations of their leadership style, mask destructive mind-sets at lower levels of the organization, and generally distort what's going on outside the executive suite. Until we and others confronted one manager we know with the evidence, he had no idea he was interfering with, and undermining, employees through the excessively large number of e-mails he was sending on a daily basis.

Spotting misaligned perceptions requires putting the spotlight on observable behavior and getting enough data to unearth the core issues. Note that traditional satisfaction or employee-engagement surveys—and even 360-degree feedback—often fail to get to the bottom of the problem. A McKinsey diagnostic that reached deep into the workforce—aggregating the responses of 52,240 individuals at 44 companies—demonstrated perception gaps across job levels at 70 percent of the participating organizations. In about two-thirds of them, the top teams were more positive about their own leadership skills than was the rest of the organization. Odds are, in other words, that rigorous organizational introspection will be eye opening for senior leaders.

3. Translate awareness into organizational change

Those open eyes will be better able to spot obstacles to organizational change. Consider the experience of a company that became aware, during a major earnings-improvement effort, that an absence of coaching was stifling progress. On the surface, people said they did not have the time to make coaching a priority. But an investigation of the root causes showed that one reason people weren't coaching was that they themselves had become successful despite never having been coached. In fact, coaching was associated with serious development needs and seen only as a tool for documenting and firing people. Beneath the surface, managers feared that if they coached someone, others would view that person as a poor performer.

Changing a pervasive element of corporate culture like this depends on a diverse set of interventions that will appeal to different parts of individuals and of the organization. In this case, what followed was a positive internal-communication campaign, achieved with the help of posters positioning star football players alongside their coaches and supported by commentary spelling out the impact of coaching on operating performance at other organizations. At the same time, executives put "the elephant in the room" and acknowledged the negative connotations of coaching, and these confessions helped managers understand and adapt such critical norms. In the end, the actions the executives initiated served to increase the frequency and quality of coaching, with the result that the company was able to move more rapidly toward achieving its performance goals.

4. Start with one change catalyst

While dealing with resistance and fear is often necessary, it's rarely enough to take an organization to the next level. To go further and initiate collective change, organizations must unleash the full potential of individuals. One person or a small group of trailblazers can provide that catalyst.

For many years, it was widely believed that human beings could not run a mile in less than four minutes. Throughout the 1940s and early 1950s, many runners came close to the four-minute mark, but all fell short. On May 6th, 1954, in Oxford, England, Roger Bannister ran a mile in three minutes and 59 seconds. Only 46 days after Bannister's historic run, John Landy broke the record again. By 1957, 16 more runners had broken through what once was thought to be an impossible barrier. Today, well over a thousand people have run a mile in less than four minutes, including high-school athletes.

Organizations behave in a similar manner. We often find widely held "four-minute mile" equivalents, like "unattainable growth goals" or "unachievable cost savings" or "unviable strategic changes." Before the broader organization can start believing that the impossible is possible, one person or a small number of people must embrace a new perspective and set out to disprove the old way of thinking. Bannister, studying to be a doctor, had to overcome physiologists' claims and popular assumptions that anyone who tried to run faster than 15 miles an hour would die.

Learning to lead yourself requires you to question some core assumptions too, about yourself and the way things work. Like Joseph Campbell's famous "hero's journey," that often means leaving your everyday environment, or going outside your comfort zone, to experience trials and adventures.⁸ One global company sent its senior leaders to places as far afield as the heart of Communist China and the beaches of Normandy with a view to challenging their internal assumptions about the company's operating model. The fresh perspectives these leaders gained helped shape their internal values and leadership behavior, allowing them to cascade the lessons through the organization upon their return.

This integration of looking both inward and outward is the most powerful formula we know for creating long-term, high-impact organizational change.

About the authors

Nate Boaz is a principal in McKinsey's Atlanta office. Erica Ariel Fox is a founding partner at Mobius Executive Leadership, a lecturer in negotiation at Harvard Law School, and a senior adviser to McKinsey Leadership Development. She is the author of Winning from Within: A Breakthrough Method for Leading, Living, and Lasting Change (HarperBusiness, 2013).

Nate Boaz would like to thank Mobius Executive Leadership for the ongoing collaboration that contributed to these insights. Erica Ariel Fox would like to thank her colleague John Abbruzzese, a senior leadership consultant at Mobius Executive Leadership, for his contribution to this article.

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Building safety into maintenance

Don't bypass one system to service another

Matt Dodds, OMRON Automation and Safety

10/14/2014

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Maintenance is an important task to keep equipment running smoothly. Everyone thinks about greasing the bearings and oiling the hinges, but what about the safety devices? How often do you have the brakes inspected on your car? Do you wait until your car no longer stops, or are you proactive and have your brakes inspected at the recommended service intervals? 

When a machine system is built, the maintenance interval of the safeguards needs to be specified and adhered to as laid out in safety standards. There are a lot of safeguarding devices that are not properly applied or not securely fastened, bypassed, or damaged that could be remedied during a regular maintenance inspection. 

Standards such as ISO13849 use the concept of performance levels to select a safeguarding device that is suited to the application and usage. However, this is assuming the device was properly applied in the first place. For example, mechanical safety switches incorporate the use of at least one set of positive opening contacts. When the specified force is applied to the actuator, it has a high probability the contact will open for the life of the product. 

An example of this is a keyed or tongue door switch, probably the most widely used switch for a hinged door. They are also the most widely misused and under-maintained. Standards clearly state that these types of switches are to be used with a stopper and an alignment device to ensure the operation key enters the switch at the proper position and there is no damage to the key opening. 

However, most of these switches are not used with either, and a few things may occur. Excessive wearing of the key slot may lead to the extraction of the operation key without the operation of the switch. Next, damage to the operation head is possible. If the key strikes the head, it may loosen it from the body to the point that when the key is extracted from the head, the mechanism will operate but the switch contacts will not change state due to the separation distance. Some manufacturers may claim that their design will work even if it is damaged, but what is the guarantee under all circumstances? Another failure that can occur is damage to the key-the key could break off in the head and not operate.

Adjustable operations key 
The number-one thing that is misapplied is the adjustable operation key. When most people are asked, "Why do you use an adjustable operation key?" the most common answer is "for doors that don't align properly." This, however, is the wrong answer; this type of key was designed for short radius doors to allow the operation key to be adjusted and flex to enter the operation head at a 90-degree angle to the opening. 

If a switch is damaged, do not attempt to repair it. Taking a head off of another switch and replacing the damaged one will not ensure its proper operation. There are two things to note here: 

1) Were the screws or threaded holes damaged? 
2) How many electrical cycles has the switch gone through? Always replace the entire switch and ensure is it properly applied such that damage will not occur again in the future.  

But what about other popular safeguarding devices such as light curtains, laser scanners, and safety mats? Type 4 light curtains are the most reliable as they continually check themselves for errors or extraneous light that may cause false tripping; however, they are not completely foolproof. Beams can be covered up and blanked and effectively bypassed by a piece of electrical tape, which is why it is important that only qualified personnel have access to enable these types of functions. 

Another way light curtains can be fooled is by the proximity to a reflective surface, although the beams operate at very tight angles. If they are mounted too close to shiny surfaces when a part of the human body enters the detection zone, they may not immediately sense that could lead to an injury. All light curtains on equipment should be supplied with a test object that is moved around the entire sensing field of the product to ensure that it is continually sensed. Never use your hand. This is true for all light curtain manuals and standards relating to the use of these products. Be wary of older light curtain products. If the product meets the IEC61496-1 and -2 standards, then you are probably OK; however, if you are using older products that do not meet these standards, it is recommended to update them to newer, safer design. 

Light curtains vs. other solutions 
Safety laser scanners and safety mats are presence-sensing devices, but they typically do not have the same diagnostic capabilities as light curtains, such as the ability to check themselves for degradation in sensing capabilities. Safety mats are usually to conductors separated by and insulator and when activated with the rated force will send a signal to a controller However, depending on the design, physical damage to the mat may cause a change in the sensed performance. Mats should be routinely inspected for damage; do not wait until the controller senses an error before replacing it with a new one. 

Safety laser scanners are becoming much more prevalent in the industry due to increased reliability, longer life expectancy, and better pollution tolerance, but like any safety device they need to be properly maintained. With proper maintenance, the operational costs can be much lower. Laser scanners send out a pulse of infrared light through an opaque-looking window and measure the time it takes to be reflected off an object back to the source. Maintenance of these devices is simple with routine cleaning of this window. 

How the window is cleaned is very important; this is a highly sensitive optic device that can detect carbon black objects, and any scratches or contaminates can lead to false tripping. It is imperative to use proper cleaning cloths or wipes and proper cleaning solutions as supplied or recommended by the manufacturer.

These are just some examples of safeguards on equipment. Almost all devices are tied into some type of safety monitoring device within the control panel. Going back 15 years, almost all monitoring devices were electromechanical incorporating a force-guided relay; these are often neglected until the equipment stops working. 

Force-guided relays, like any mechanical component, will wear over time and need to be replaced. Another question often asked is "When do you change your safety relays?" Most of the time the answer is "when they fail."

Going back to the scenario of the brakes on your car, there is the high probability of an accident. Thankfully, in the design of most safety systems two force-guided relays are used and they are put in series and cross-monitored such that when one fails the circuit cannot be reset. However, don't wait for this to happen-be proactive and change out the relay, safety monitoring relay unit, or other output device at the end of the useful life of the product.

The next time you are on the plant floor, look at a guard and then look closer to see if any of issued mentioned here apply. If they do not, then great-there is nothing to worry about. However, do not get complacent. Just because it is maintained now does not mean it will be maintained in the future. Make sure there is a check and inspection of safeguards, monitoring, and switching devices at regular intervals, and also make sure that safeguards never are bypassed during maintenance or normal operation. 

Matt Dodds is product marketing manager for safety for OMRON Automation and Safety."The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten"

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