The Indian construction equipment (CE) market has been on a major upturn since 2015, mostly driven by the Government’s strong focus on infrastructure development. Meritor India is all geared to meet the widening demand of the industry and construction equipment manufacturers with its strengthened product portfolio.
Meritor is a market leader in this segment in China and is expanding in India. The Meritor product range in India for the construction equipment market offers extremely high reliability and improved fuel efficiency and are highly power dense. Also, it is believed that the key to lower the total cost of ownership is to offer superior efficiency, minimum downtime, ease of serviceability and longer service maintenance.
Meritor India’s portfolio of axles covers varied applications in the CE industry like MT846, a proven medium-duty hub reduction axle for medium duty tippers, the P600 series hub reduction axles for heavy duty applications like deep mining and TLB axle for backhoe loader application. The company has been serving Caterpillar, a major construction equipment manufacturing OEM in India for more than a decade by manufacturing wheeler loader axles using the Meritor process technology.
Meritor’s global market leadership position and expertise in commercial vehicle axles help it in understanding the customer requirements, and incorporating the same in the product design, development and validation. It has a dedicated global team focused on CE segment products. Also, Meritor’s global acquisition of Fabco Holdings, thereby acquiring its suite of products and technologies, has provided it with new products and customers in its Specialty, Defense and Off-Highway range of product offerings in key markets.
In certain cases, products from Meritor’s global portfolio have been customized to suit the Indian application requirements. Parts availability is a key to the equipment industry and its strong aftermarket network with more than 120 authorized dealerships ensures easy parts accessibility and availability anywhere in the country.
Meritor also partners with the service mechanics and provide them necessary training and tools to service its products. Its specialist service engineers and product specialists can provide support anytime, anywhere in the country.
“The Indian CE industry is poised to grow at a rapid pace and, we are technology and product-ready to meet with the customer and market requirements both in terms of product offerings and timeline. Our product development process includes application-specific information like road load data acquisition, target reliability definition, voice of customer – OEM key requirement gathering, product concept evaluation, design, development and testing. The product specifications are frozen jointly with the OEMs and the field testing of prototype is monitored together”, states Dr. Muthukumar N, President & Whole-Time Director, Meritor India.
Mr. Thimmaiah Napanda, MD & CEO, Meritor India, adds: “Meritor’s focus areas of product design strategy are modular design, high reliability, shock resistant components, light-weighting, longer maintenance intervals, reduction in oil quantity, high efficiency gearing and lower cost.”
Being a leader in the commercial vehicle axle market, Meritor is committed to establish leadership position in axles for the CE segment as well. Its strength in innovation, product performance, agile manufacturing and aftermarket support, now combined with extensive product range, makes it a valuable partner in the CE space.