RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

Research and development (R&D) department is mainly involved with the design and development and the betterment of existing products. Thus, the major objective of R&D is to develop quality products based on cutting-edge technology. The company R&D facility operates over a wide range of electronic research and applications. The facility is a self contained centre with well equipped laboratories and multi disciplinary team of professional design engineers. The R&D department is mainly concerned with designing of three types of products: a. Products provided by the customer according to their specifications. b. Existing products available in the market. c. Existing products with additional features. The major phases of new product development are: 1. Planning and defining program or project: This stage is the initial stage in the long process of R&D. The initial stage is concerned with identifying what kind of product is to be made and it is feasibility in creation (financial, conceptual, and process). 2. Product design and development: In this stage, the department usually uses the PRO-E software to design the finished product. Along with this the product and the tools are also designed. The manufacturing of the tools also take place in this stage. A review on the progress of the process is done bringing to an end the second phase of the NPD process. 3. Process design and development: In this phase the process sequence, labor characteristics, room characteristics, etc. are identified and developed. 4. Product and process validation: The validation and testing of the products made are conducted in this phase along with the final designing of the product. The design made up in this phase goes into the pre-production run in the fifth stage. The relay values, drop out volts, withstand, life, ampere, etc. are tested and validated to the benchmark. A review is conducted after this phase.

5. Feedback, assessment and corrective action: A preproduction run for 20,000 to 30,000 units are conducted. After this regular production is done. For the first three months the R&D team along with production team would be constantly monitoring the production process and the mistakes are taken care immediately without any delay.

The average time taken for a new product to be designed and developed is six months.

MANUFACTURING DEPARTMENT
Manufacturing is the main department in any organization and the major impetus of any company also goes into this function of manufacturing. O/E/N has a manufacturing space of 18,000 m2 in three locations; Mulanthuruthy, Vytilla in Kerala and Peenya in Karnataka. The manufacturing department consists of

TOOL ROOM
O/E/N has a well equipped modern tool room with all facilities. The specialty is in the design and manufacture of tools and moulds for electromechanical components. Tool room is managed by a team of expert engineers in tool design and in manufacturing a group of well trained tool room makers and mechanics, a well equipped press and moulding shop attached to the tool room provide facility for providing the tool and moulds. Tool room works in four wings: Tool design Machining Tool assembly Maintenance The Tool Room is equipped with CAD facility and a machine shop having the following special machines in addition to conventional machine tools. Charmilles Wire EDM

Charmilles Spark EDM Wickman CNC Profile Grinder WMW Optical Profile Grinder WMW Jig Boring Machine Mikron Milling Machine The Tool room can accept orders for design and manufacture of the following types of

tools and moulds, for fabrication of components to customers design. Press Tools Progressive, compound and Single operation tools Injection Moulds Compression moulds Transfer moulds Assembly Tools Jigs & Fixtures

FABRICATION ROOM
The main assembly is supported by comprehensive fabrication facilities with power press for pressed piece parts, a plating plates that handles plating of conventional as well as precious metals. This has three divisions. Actual fabrication Electro plating Moulding shops

ASSEMBLY ROOM
This department is mainly related to the manufacturing and assembly of relays, switches and potentiometers. This department works 24 hours in a day as three shifts. Their main objective is to reduce process scrap, improve group index and achieve programmed production.

Relays: Relays are differentiated based on materials used, temperature and pressure
withstanding ability, electrical parameters, type of moulding, etc.

List of operations in manufacturing relays are: Coil terminal insertion and bending Coil winding Coil tinning and cleaning Coil terminal straightening Core head correction Coil, core yoke assembly, staking NO/NC contact terminal signaling and cleaning Moving spring bending Moving terminal R/C Armature correction Armature/retainer/base plate assembly Cover printing Calibration and cover insertion Base plate and cover staking Scaling, hole checking/filling and terminal cleaning Terminal cutting Terminal tinning and cleaning

Switches: O/E/N manufactured switches are mainly used by the Ministry of Defense. The
series 13 switches are exclusively created for a company in the U.K. Switches are differentiated based on materials used, temperature and pressure withstanding ability, electrical parameters, type of moulding, etc. The main processes in switch manufacturing are: Rotor blade trimming Rotor blade splitting Staking Eyeleting Shaft and star wheel assembly stacking

C washer cylindering Ball and spring assembly Final assembly Mounting hardware assembly