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Simpsons of Madras became in 1955 the first
Indian manufacturer of diesel engines. It did this
with the help of Perkins, based at Peterborough,
which has stimulated local manufacture by 16
overseas licensees.
The transfer of technology has been so
successful that all the components for the 25,000
engines manufactured annually at Simpsons for
trucks, buses and tractors are locally made.
Perkins helps Simpsons and other licensees with
training, factory layout, equipment selection and
the updating of engines. Simpsons employs 2,000
people.
A Brazilian company, Maxion, is Perkins’s
biggest licensee, making 80,000 engines a year,
including an alcohol-burning version, for
Brazil-built tractors, combine harvesters and
trucks. Millat Tractors of Pakistan employs 9,000
people, making 11,000 three- and four-cylinder
engines a year, primarily for tractors. About 70
per cent of components for the three-cylinder
Perkins engine built at Lahore are locally made.
The chance to make them has stimulated a network of
Pakistani industrial undertakings.
The
international reputation and services network of
Perkins engines help overseas licensees to export.
Ten per cent of Millat’s tractors go to Africa. Ten
per cent of Simpsons engines go abroad in exported
equipment. Maxion engines power vehicles and
equipment built by such customers as
Massey-Ferguson, General Motors and Ford and are
sold all over the world.
Perkins also buys components from Simpsons and
Maxion to build its own engines: 1,800,000 from
Maxion in 1990, including cylinder-block castings,
pistons and piston rings. From Simpsons it is
buying 90,000, most of the value being
crankshafts.
Changes in manufacture involve Perkins in
helping to train local staff. Besides this, Perkins
quality-control engineers regularly visit
licensees, and licensees’ quality-control staff
visit Perkins in Peterborough.
Simpsons has gained sufficient experience to
design two- and four- cylinder engines on its own.
It is not often, remarks an Indian expert, that a
foreign collaborator transfers know-how to such an
extent as to allow local design.
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