Bharat Gears Ltd(BGL), promoted by Bharat Steel Tubes and Raunaq & Company in collaboration with ZF Friedrichshafen, Germany, was incorporated in 1971 to manufacture automotive gears. The foreign collaborator holds 25.99 % stake in the company.
BGL is a major global supplier of automotive gears and heat treatment furnaces. The Company manufactures wide range of Ring Gears and Pinions, Transmission Gears and Shafts, Differential Gears, Gear Boxes and Heat Treatment Furnaces; primarily catering to commercial vehicle, agricultural machinery and construction equipment segments. The Company's manufacturing facilities located at Mumbra near Mumbai, Faridabad near New Delhi and Lonand near Pune. The Company is also engaged in after-market distribution. There delivery expands to nations across Europe, the USA, Mexico, Brazil, and Asia.
BGL has two division i.e Automotive gears division and Industrial Furnaces division with the former contributing around 92% of the turnover and the later the balance.
The automotive gears division manufactures a wide range of gears - hypoid, spiral gears and differential gears, which go into axle assemblies and parallel axes gears and shafts, which make up the gear box assemblies. This division supplies to OEMS in tractors, trucks & Bus and Utility vehicle industries. The company also serves the replacement market and exports to overseas market.
BGL's two gear manufacturing units were located at Mumbra(Thane Dt), Maharashtra and Faridabad, Haryana. The Faridabad unite commenced commercial operation on May 1, 2000. BGL entered into an collaboration with Holcroft, US, for specialised heat-treatment furnaces.
In May 2012 the Company opened work on constructing its third plant at Lonand in Satara district of Maharashtra. The Commercial operations/production at this plant of the Company was started in March, 2014.
In 2022-23, the Company implemented multimachine layouts in the gear-cutting section and the grinding section. In the Mumbra Plant, cycle time was reduced on hobbing machines by increasing hob RPM and in spline shaping operations by changing cutting parameters. In the Bevel segment, the face grinding operation was removed for selected pinion parts. HT loading quantity was enhanced by introducing a new grid for selected parts. Loading quantity per tray is increased by loading an extra grid.
In Lonand Plant, productivity improvement was achieved by adopting cluster cycles, reducing hobbing stock, and using carbide fixtures, resulting in better throughput in finishing operation. Gear grinding fixtures were replaced with collate type or hydraulic fixtures to achieve higher cutting speed and feed. The gear grinding capacity further boosted by increasing cutting velocity. A hydraulic-operated de-burring system was installed on shaping machines. This resulted in the elimination of manual deburring operations after shaping and improving throughput and reduced handling, manpower, and rejection. Further, a rack system was introduced in Finish Goods store for effective use of vertical space in 2023.
I n Faridabad Plant, the Company eliminated pinion top face grinding process. Tooling coating modified which improved productivity in cutting and parts shifted from manual loading to autoloading. Further, set-up time in the hobbing process was reduced by introducing multi-gear cutting (twin hobs) in 2023.