Innovation

Innovation is the fuel of success for the current markets and engine of growth for future opportunities. At CUMI, Innovation lies at the core of the way we do our business. Our employees take pride in instrumenting changes and bringing customer delight through both process and product innovations. Patents and IPs in the form of papers and journal submissions are a testimony to our relentless pursuit for innovation.

The recognition at the CII Industrial awards 2015 and launch of an array of new products like rubberized ceramic for vehicle armour applications, varieties in shaft sleeves, zirconia lance nozzles, mini mats for pyro jet burner applications/food applications, CUMI Tuff 90SP, Ceramic cone and grooved cylinders etc. are testimonials for our quest for technological advances. We relentlessly pursue value addition and differentiation through performance enhanced materials to meet demanding customer needs and to open up new market space.

At CUMI, we constantly explore joint project opportunities with our other business units to improve efficiencies. CUMI’s innovation strategy, founded on the three boxes of Innovation – managing the present, selectively abandoning the past and creating the future – is set to create value for the organization.

R&D Labs

We are a company with a very strong focus on R&D. We have a healthy mix of in-house R&D projects and collaborative R&D projects with external partners.This has been further intensified with the investment in a new state-of-the-art R&D that was opened in August 2016. Another focus area for us is the collaborative R&D with other divisions of CUMI (like Abrasives, Refractories and Electro-minerals) and also with other companies in the Murugappa Group.

The R&D houses several equipment for important ceramic material and product characterization. We have organized our equipment into material characterization, advanced material micro-structure characterization, and advanced dilatometry (DIL) for precise profiling of dimensional changes for a given temperature range.

For the purpose of particle and granulate size characterization, we use equipment like Serigraphs and also Laser-diffraction based particle size analyser. We also have BET – Surface Area analyser for measurement of Specific Surface Area. We extensively use the NETZSCH Dilatometer during the process of material and product development.

In addition, each of CUMI’s R&D uses complementary facilities available in other R&D’s of CUMI’s Business units.

New Product development

In recent years, R&D has helped in develop and commercialize several new products. We launched our CUMITHERM range of products for use in Thermal applications – these include aluminium titanate products for use in non-ferrous applications and magnesia stabilized zirconia products for use in steel metallurgy. In addition, the R&D has also developed and commercialized products like metallized ceramics for high vacuum semiconductor applications. In the category of Wear Resistant ceramics, again several new offerings have been developed and commercialized, like ceramic lined rubber hoses for dredging applications, special wear coatings, etc.

While the above are examples of our R&D having developed products for the immediate and medium-term market needs, a considerable amount of time is also spent on the R&D on futuristic projects like metal matrix composites, medical ceramics, thin film metallization on ceramics, ceramic substrates, and the like.

Technical Collaborations

The IC division is also a member of CERAM Research UK. In addition, we have collaborative projects with ISRO in India and have recently completed a Transfer of Technology from SAC-ISRO India for thin film metallization techniques on ceramic substrates. In parallel, the division is also working with National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) on the development of a process for the manufacture of ceramic substrates.