Financial Times

NERD sets up Centre for Manufacturing Excellence
By Quintus Perera
The advent of the open market economy coupled with the liberalization of trade has resulted in an increasingly competitive market for manufactured goods in Sri Lanka. This sharp competition mostly affects SMIs mainly due to inaccessibility to latest technological know-how, which could give them the necessary competitive edge to build up and maintain a competitive position.

Statistics reveal that countries like China, Germany, India, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, UK and USA supply nearly 55 percent of the annual demand for dies and moulds in Sri Lanka. Many of the imports are done at comparatively higher cost.

A recent survey conducted by the National Engineering Research and Development Centre (NERD) showed that nearly 90 percent of the current demand in the country is for high precision, high quality dies and moulds, with local die and mould manufacturers being able to meet just 30 percent of the demand.

Most of the SMIs in this trade are unable to tap this high-end market as they are handicapped in their effort to expand the range of products and improve quality due to lack of technical know-how, skilled manpower, modern tools and machinery, and testing facilities.

Taking into consideration the market situation, NERD took steps to set up recision machining for the benefit of the local industry, by establishing a Centre for Manufacturing Excellence (CME). The Ministry of Science and Technology through an ADB loan provided the bulk of the financial assistance needed.

The purpose of setting up of the CME is to fill up the technological gap and assist the die and mould making industry to expand the range of products, improve quality and to meet customer delivery targets. CME caters for customer needs, directly undertaking high precision die and mould making in some selected areas and secondly by helping the local die and mould making industry to produce goods of international standards by providing the necessary technological support.

The objectives of this project are: design and manufacture of dies/moulds and other precision components; provide accurate and innovative solutions; carry out R & D programmes on product design and development; conduct in house training programmes for locals exposing them to state of the art CAD/CAM technology and precision machining applications; support the local small and medium industry to produce high quality products of international standards and maintain a technology watch on latest CAD/CAM technological innovations in the area of precision machining and disseminate such information to the benefit of the local industry.

Assistance is provided to fine tune designs or provides a complete design solution including the choice of material. Provide comprehensive training facilities. Ms. Preeni Withanage heads the CME at the NERD Centre and can be contacted on telephone numbers 236284, 236384, 233153 or email nerdc@sri.lanka.net

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