जी हमारी कुछ अपनी व्यक्तिगत समस्याएं थी, और कुछ अपने जैसे लोगों की समस्याएं आई हमारे सामने। हमारे ऊपर कुछ डिपार्टमेंट्स के नियम लागू होते हैं।  उसके तहत कुछ व्याख्याओं के साथ हम लोगो को कुछ परेशानी आ रही थी। अपने मुद्दों को उठाने के लिए हमे एक असोसिएशन  बनाना पढ़ा। आज उसी के आधार पर हम आगे बढ़ रहे हैं।

जी हम व्यापारियों और सरकार के बीच के फासले काम करते है।  व्यापारी हम भी हैं परन्तु जिस व्यापारी के पास एक वेइंग स्केल इस्तेमाल होता है, जहां से उपभोक्ता सामान खरीदता है, उन व्यापारियों और सरकार के बीच की कढ़ी हैं हम। जो नियम उत्तर प्रदेश सरकार द्वारा बनाये गए हैं वे दो कोटि में बांटे गए हैं – आदेश और निर्देश

आदेश कुछ नियमों से  जुड़ा होता है और निर्देश अधिकारियों के विचारो से उत्पन्न होता है। यदि आदेशों का पालन हो तोह हमे संगठन की, आवाज़ उठाने की आवश्यकता ही नहीं है। लेकिन के विपक्ष, निर्देश बीच में आते हैं, क्युकी निर्देशों की जवाबदेनियाँ नहीं होती। तोह इन आदेशो के तहत कार्य करने में जो हमे विसंगतियाँ आ रही जिसके कारण उनका पालन करने में  हमे समस्या हो रही थी , इस प्रकार की स्थितिओयो से लड़ने के लिए हमने यह संगठन बनाया जिसके द्वारा हमे सही चीज़ो को समाज के समक्ष ला पाए।

हम  स्वयं एक कंपनी है जैसे की आप जानते हैं। हमारे कार्य का एक “मॉनिटरिंग अधिकारी” होता है जो हमें निर्धारित करता है। हमारे और इस उपदेशक के बीच जो दिक्कतें आती हैं  उन्हें हम अपने उच्च अधिकारी , जैसे कि डिप्टी कंट्रोलर , कंट्रोलर आदि , के पास ले जाते हैं और उन से समाधान की उम्मीद करते हैं।

हम इस वक़्त अपने आपको इस प्रश्न में इतना उलझा हुआ महसूस कर रहे हैं! एक समस्या हो तो बताये. हम तोह जैसे समस्याओं के जाल में फसे हैं ! मैं शुरुआत करूँगा छोटी- छोटी चीज़ो पर रौशनी डालने से,और मैं आशा करता हु की आपके माध्यम से मेरी बात ज़ादा लोगो तक्क पोहचे। सबसे बड़ा मुद्दा इस वक़्त हमारे लिए शोषण एवं भ्रष्टाचार का है। हर तीन साल में अफसर का ट्रांसफर निश्चित रूप से होना चाहिए परंतु वो अभी भी स्थायी रूप से स्थिर पढ़ा हुआ है।  इस प्रकार के कई मुद्दे हैं जिनसे हम जूंझ रहे हैं।

बहुत से बदलाव आये हैं पिछले कुछ सालों में। हमारे जो व्यवसायी बंधू हैं, जिन्होंने खुद पर बीती कठिनाइयों को अपनी नियति ही मान लिया था, आज उन्हें उम्मीद की एक किरण दिखाई दे रही है इस एसोसिएशन के कारण। इस संगठन के माध्यम से उनमे एक आशा जाग रही है जिससे उन्हें यह उम्मीद दिखाई दे रही है की वे भी समाज की मुख्यधारा में आ सकते हैं। वे अपने शोषण के विरुद्ध अपनी आवाज़ बुलंद कर सकते हैं। और सबसे अच्छी बात यह है की हमारे जो उच्च अधिकारी हैं, वे हमे जीविका देते हैं। अपने संगठन की वजह से हम उन तक वो बाते पहुंचा बातें हैं जो उन्हें ज्ञात नहीं।

सरकार ने हमे नियम, कुछ “गाइडलाइन्स” दी है जिसका हमें पालन  करना है। फिलहाल हम उन्हीं नियमों के कार्यान्वयन की कठिनाइयों से जूझ रहे हैं। अभी के लिए बस कुछ नियम बन जाए जिस से मेरी मुश्किलें थोड़ी कम् हो जाए – इस दिशा में हम नहीं पहुंच पाए। परन्तु एक नियम का हल दूसरे नियम से निकालना कितना उचित यह हम नहीं जानते। जनता और हमसे जुड़ी कंपनियां और हमारे अपने लोग,व्यवसायी वर्ग आदि , इस संगठन से उत्साहित हैं और यह फिलहाल हमारे लिए बहुत ख़ुशी की बात है।

झरने नदियों में , नदियां समुद्र में – यह सब तोह सार्वत्रिक नियम है। इस महासंघ से जुड़ने से हम अपनी विशालता को बड़ा सकते हैं। इससे हमें मौका मिलेगा अपनी बात को अच्छे स्तर पर रख कर अपनी बातों को , अपने मुद्दों को मनवा सकते हैं क्योंकि संगठन से उत्पन्न होने वाली मांग उचित ही होती है। मेरी शुभकामनाएं और सहयोग इस के पक्ष में है पूर्ण रूप से और मैं अपनी पूरी क्षमता के साथ इस महासंघ के विकास में भाग लूँगा।

मेरे अनुभव के हिसाब से मेरी यह  सलाह है कि आपको नियमों को जान लें । यदि आने के पूर्व और आने के कुछ ही समय में अगर वो नियमों को नहीं पहचानेंगे तो वे मौके का उचित लाभ नहीं उठा पाएंगे। मात्र कनियमों की पहचान से आपको सारे मार्ग खुद नज़र आने लगेंगे।

It was December of 1979, Avery India was looking for apprentices. I applied and got hired. Little did I know that this was the industry with which I’ll be continuing my journey for over 40 years. While working with Avery India, I completed my part-time diploma in electrical engineering and finished my training in the next four years. I was with Avery India till 2002 and was lucky enough to travel throughout the country and get involved in almost all the challenging projects of the company. These projects were challenging and hence helped me enhance my knowledge and build up experience. Whatever I am today is because of the experience given by Avery India. With Avery, I got the chance to travel and work in countries like Canada, Tanzania, Indonesia and Guyana. If I had to choose I’d say my favourite was Indonesia, what a beautiful country.

A lot of things have changed since I joined the industry. For example, when I joined Avery India had a monopoly over the market. But after the year 1990 new competitors started entering the market, the competition grew. Even within the company, people began leaving to pursue their ventures in different parts of the country. Even as of this time, our industry is going through many changes and reforms that include industrial automation. To me, the future of our industry looks bright as the weighing industry is a part of every other industry. Because of so many competitors, the companies need to adapt to changes as quickly as they can to stay ahead.

To all the young professionals joining the industry, I would say don’t rely much on your educational background. Once you have entered the industry as a fresher you will need to keep your eyes, ears and brain open to learn. You will find unexpected sources from where you can absorb knowledge. To learn efficiently,  keep any ego aside and get your hands to work. Practice, Practice and Practice! I recall the time when computers were getting integrated into our systems. I did not know anything about computers whatsoever. It was when people used to carry floppy disks around. The user interface was not so user friendly. We had a computer installed at the working site. I remember I used to go to the computer room after my shift and played with it to understand how it worked. It was an exciting experience to teach myself how to operate it.

The current most exciting experience for me is to have my own business by the name of Mass Industrial Solutions. Even after working with a company for more than 20 years, starting a business is very challenging. But I am trying to learn every day. I believe that whatever may be just be in the field and learn things with your own hands.

In a true sense, my journey in the industry started when I was in Germany, where I saw a door to the world of technology open in front of me. My eldest brother advised me to learn one more European language other than English. Back in those days in Chennai, we had exposure to french and german language. I happened to be an acquaintance of a professor who did his doctorate from Germany who helped me with additional classes and recommended I go to Germany. As a kid, I loved visiting the libraries to read books about countries where I got fascinated by the beauty of the German landscape. I was fortunate enough to arrive in Germany as a student as I could explore the German culture. During my course, I got the chance to visit nearby museums, factories and also the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, where I saw a Gyroscopic System and Quartz Oscillator. Afterwards, I keep looking and updating myself with new technologies, which ultimately became the foundation of my life in the industry.

I started working at a time when things were analogue. It was the time when we were in conversation with people from IITs and ETDC, converting mechanical weighbridges into electromechanical weighbridges by introducing loadcells. This shift made the equipment more accurate and efficient. With the advancement in technology, things started looking even better. The new technology helped to bring down costs enabling more people to get their hands on better equipment. That not only helped the weighing industry but provided an opportunity for other industry to grow and advance. For example, because the cost of digital weighing machines has come down, many small vendors are acquiring and making their systems more efficient. In hospitals, due to new technology, the beds also have a weighing system installed in them for real-time monitoring of the weight.

Working with a German company afterwards was one of the most important learning experiences of my life. They provided me with all the necessary disciplines like punctuality, commitment to quality and delivery and even for the smallest of communication that they went into a lot of detail. These companies pay keen attention to the quality and procedure standards. Even if you show that you are supplying to big companies but the auditing team does not find the standards according to the template that they provide, they will mark you negative. I believe that working with them made it easier for me to work with brands from other countries.

Everyone should be aware of their capabilities, capacities and limitations. Even if a company has a smaller product line and a smaller market, instead of just expanding their territory, they should first check whether they can deliver the best quality and can attend to all the queries in a given time. This practice will increase the standard of a company. There are other factors as well that could be improved. For example, one should have a team that is equally committed. He had a German consultant, the sight of some of their employees sleeping in the afternoon was unimaginable to the consultant. When he was in Germany he saw that people are so self-motivated that they do not need supervision on the shop floor. It is the mixture of multiple values that needs to get inculcated in the workforce. To tackle the problem the industry has multiple clusters which have an association. In these associations, the key players of the industry get together and invite specialists. These professionals provide the workforce with Seminars, Workshops and webinars. These practices help the people inculcate the necessary values and skills which in turn, increases the standard of the industry.

My Journey started with me working at a hotel front desk as the 3rd shift clerk and night auditor. But soon I realised that I need to get moving! So I re-enrolled in engineering school and also took a job at Eagle Window and Door in Dubuque, IA. They were very flexible with me because I think they recognised some potential in young Dan. I was ready to do multiple tasks during flexible hours and go back to school. It was the hard way of doing it but in the end, everything worked out okay. This experience was a springboard for everything that happened afterwards. I got my associates degree and kept moving forward to earn my degree in electromechanical engineering. All this experience allowed me to slowly shift my focus to experimenting and testing strain gauges and load cells. I also started working towards building custom transducers. I am very thankful that I got hands-on experience in engineering and had some fantastic mentors. They took me under their guidance and showed me the art of building load cells.

The most memorable experience of my journey was when I deposited my first cheque from my first budget as finally, I had the chance of getting paid to do things my way. Originally I struggled to find a name for my company as I wanted something that resonated with me. Northstar is something that people have been using for guidance and to find their way. The name is a reference to finding your solution.

One of the most exciting projects that I worked on was the Tri-Axial Hitch Loadcell. It was an engineering challenge for me because I had to maximise the output but under the constraints of working within specified parameters and sizes. It was really exciting to see how the project came together and seeing it out there in the field gathering some extremely useful data. As of now, I don’t see myself competing with the bigger brands. This is because at this stage I am a small company with me doing almost all of the work. I wish I could make a copy of myself so I can get a little bit of help and that will allow me to take get things done faster and take more projects. Another challenge that I face is that I am a small company so I buy things in small volume and that means that I am paying more money. My aim is to give out the best product possible. I try and implement the experience gained from the previous project into the new one to make the product even better. I want my work to speak for myself and that is how I am planning to increase my market share.

I would love to expand and get more manpower but I am not really sure if they teach strain gauge in technology and as far as I know, they certainly don’t teach custom transducer building technology at schools. So in order for me to get more people on board, I have to take on a student and teach them individually and once that person has learnt the basics, I can take on another one. For the new minds entering into the industry, I would ask them to find the right balance. One should have hands-on experience along with engineering and technical skills because that is what allowed me to be flexible and try and experiment with multiple things. Don’t just focus on desk work, don’t hide behind the computer, be on the floor and learn what the engineers do. Experimenting after understanding the basics, opens the door to new ideas and possibilities.

There were several stepping stones to get where I am today. In 2017, my business partner and I were in corporate, desk jobs. We both were looking to do something entrepreneurial and more hands-on. So we quit our jobs and started searching for an industrial service company that we could buy and we found the American Scale company as a result of that.

There are so many memorable times that it’s really hard for me to pick just one or two. But to answer the question, I think it has to be the day when we met our entire team and let them know that we’d be joining them. Other than that, the fact that we would be interacting with multiple industries, was amazing. That was really exciting and interesting.

It has to be our team! They go above and beyond daily for our customers and are incredibly talented, focused and hardworking since the beginning. Also, we’re grateful that we built some good relations with the older and much more experienced folks in the industry who’ve worked for more than 40 years and are there to guide and inform us.

One of the challenges I remember was installing a truck scale over the weekend at this recycle centre and had to have that finished by Monday. We made a couple of small mistakes in terms of getting the initial measurements and the scale was a couple of inches too short. So we had to call the weldor and have sixteen steel plates cut, meet a couple of people from the other office in the middle of the night and it was pouring down raining. But we managed to install the scale by Sunday noon and the customer was really happy

Our number one goal throughout the covid and even thereafter is to safeguard our team and our employees because everybody must return to their family safely at the end of the day.

 I’m interested to see where the scale industry goes. At the end of the day, these scales are sensors in the field and I’m excited to see the weight data capturing or having an impact on other industries. I’d also expect the weighing equipment to show some technological advancements. In the American Scale, we would also be leaning into that. We just want to provide the best experience to our customers.

 If they want to join the industry, they should prepare themselves, I’d recommend taking help from the tools available online, like the webinars, resources of some of the manufacturers, educating themselves etc. However, they must know how to use types of equipment and be ready to work in and adapt to different physical environments to work in.

Approximately 70% of Indian market uses extremely low-quality products. Many a times, the end client as well as system integrators look for the cheaper solutions and don’t bother about the problems they may face after the installation. Anyone who work with a quality Weighbridge manufacturer declares himself a supplier/service provider without having deeper knowledge and product knowhow. These are some of the challenges being faced by the weighing industry today.

On the other side these challenges itself are the opportunities for quality product manufacturers. India has an advantage of a big geographical & industrial area and consistent industrial growth. If we are able to convert even 20% of these low cost users, that would be a massive gain for quality product manufacturers. At Thames Side Sensors, we give great importance to educating the customer and our partner OEMs. We conduct regular training for their product knowledge enhancement which in turn is responsible for the growth we are having.

With every passing day, competition is growing. This makes it tough for any company to grow without the following:

1. Quality products
2. Quality service support
3. Prompt after sales support
4. Competitive Pricing
5. Trainings, Technological & Product awareness
6. Regular dialogue with Legal Metrology, Govt of India to update them about the standard manufacturers need to follow

We are targeting every industrial segment like Pharmaceutical, Steel, Cement,  Packaging, food, Power sector and others. We are creating awareness amongst the users about technology behind weighing, importance of quality and related factors. Also tying up with some of the MNCs having multiple location manufacturing, for their global recommendations.

Many things in India are only in documents and when we go to the sites, we see the different picture. To save some money initially, many small scale industries don’t bother to follow the weighing standards and go for the “Jugaad” technology. They don’t  check the credibility of the vendor or the authenticity of the product the vendor is supplying and then they suffer.

Meanwhile the big industries always prefer the reputed brands and products which comply with Indian and International standards, so that they shall not face any problem in their day to day operations. We Thames Side Sensors India Pvt. Ltd. always tell the client to follow the standards set by the govt. agencies. We always maintain transparency with clients and educate them about what we are offering to them and how we are better than others. We are also in discussions with Legal Metrology, Govt of India and explain to them about the short cuts some of the people are taking and requesting them for stringent controls.

We plan to hold seminars all over India to educate the customer on our industry-leading technologies as I said earlier. Eventhough our goal is the increase market share in India, our philsosphy is not to focus on incresing market share but it is to focus on satifiying our exisiting customer. The market will everntually follow!

The Weighing industry in India is penny pinching therefore most customers are not ready to pay for advanced technology instead, they tend to go for the cheapest solution. We like to call it the Cup and Bowl addiction. Although Cup and Ball loadcells are in our product portfolio, we highly recommend all our customer to upgrade to Daisy Chain Loadcells so they don’t comprise on quality.

Our vision is to educate the customers on industry-leading technologies and show them value in terms of ROI of our products and upgrading to newer technologies. This is obviously not an easy task but Delmer has never walked away from challenges and never plans to do so in the future either! Delmer Group’s vision is to measure value for our customers as the slogon says, and we shall keep doing that until we satisfy the industries and more importantly the customers needs.

There is definitely a huge gap in foreign producers compared to Indian factories, we aim to reduce that gap by providing the best technology solution at an affordable price point. One of the obvious gaps between foreign producers and Indian ones is quality. We have fixed this issue by producing our products in our state of the art manufacturing facilities around Europe. We plan to bring thess factories know-how and eventually also the machinery to India so we can give an even lower price point to all our customers in India