What Make in India looks like from a workshop floor

Make in India was launched in 2014 to move design and manufacturing into the country. In practice it is the reason a naval establishment can ask an Indian workshop to reproduce a part that used to arrive on a ship from somewhere else.

The work behind an indigenised part

Indigenisation is filed as procurement and executed as engineering. It usually starts from a disadvantage: the original manufacturer has withdrawn support, and there is no drawing.

• Measure the existing item and recover its geometry
• Draw it back up, and work out which dimensions are functional and which are incidental
• Choose materials and a process that can hold those dimensions
• Build, finish, and prove it against the item it has to replace or serve

Get one of those wrong and the part is scrap. Get them right and a capability that was heading for retirement stays in service, resupplied from a workshop in the same country.

Leo Enterprises has worked this way for Indian Naval establishments since 2015, and was recognised by the Navy for completing indigenisation projects on time.