IITM provides major boost to indigenise manufacturing capabilities in India

Inaugurated by Dr AR Sihag, Secretary, Department of Heavy Industry, the AMTDC is one-of-its-kind translational research and development centre, which brings the concept of industry-academia collaboration into reality and is set up in IIT Madras Research Park, a nodal infrastructure for academia-industry interaction under one roof. The Centre is expected to offer solutions for developing advanced technologies in capital goods manufacturing sector with the collaboration of industrial partners.

Established by IIT Madras with the support from Department of Heavy Industry, Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprises under its Capital Goods Scheme on ‘Enhancement of Competitiveness in Indian Capital Goods Sector,’ this Centre is registered as a not-for-profit society to function as a special purpose vehicle focusing on the technological developments in the Capital Goods Sector.

The centre works closely with the industry, which has also provided a part of funding for research and development. It is currently developing prototypes that cater to the needs of industries across several sectors including Aerospace, Nuclear, Machine Tool, Automotive and Engineering Industry.

Sihag said his department is working on the next stage of the scheme under which AMTDC was funded, and in phase 2, an ambitious target was fixed to scale up about five-fold increase in outlay.

The AMTDC undertakes Research and Development (R&D) in the areas of sophisticated and high precision machine tools, smart manufacturing platform for production processes, low-cost automation and robotic systems and mechatronic modules for machine tools besides improving the technology base / ready-to-use technologies for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME). The Centre is established over an area of 9,000 sq ft in IIT MadrasResearch Park.