by Sudipta Sengupta
HYDERABAD: Following the stupendous success of its existing units in Hyderabad, the global aerospace giant, Lockheed Martin, is all set to scale up its India operations. While, at present, the American firm - in partnership with Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) - manufactures only the tail of the C-130J Super Hercules fleet at the city-based facilities, it now intends to build a number of different machined parts at these units located within the Special Economic Zone at Adibatla.
One of the two Lockheed-Tata plants in Hyderabad also build cabins for the Sikorsky helicopter, used by defence forces and search and rescue agencies the world over.
"Today, we are doing extremely well on both these projects. The product is cost effective and also profitable for our units. So now, using the capabilities of the units here, we will fabricate many of those parts -- currently made in the US and shipped to India to be assembled and then shipped again back again- indigenously here in India," said Lorraine Martin, deputy executive vice-president, Lockheed Martin (Rotary and Mission Systems).
Ahead of her talk at the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, on Tuesday, she said that this move "will bring more work to India - in the engineering and manufacturing of metal components' segment". "Also, it will enable us to actually bring the price down for our customers. So it's a win-win situation for all," Martin said, hoping that this shift will take place over the next one year or so.
Sharing some specifics about the additional employment that this scale-up will create, officials of the firm said that the new work is likely to generate an "additional 68 jobs -- 20 highly skilled associate engineers and manufacturing engineers and the balance tool engineers and machinists".
Currently, the two JVs employ about 1,000 people. "Of this 5 per cent are women and we are hoping to enhance this. In fact, our manager aspires to take it to 50 per cent in the future. So there's a lot of work for us to do there," said Martin, known for championing the advancement of women in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).