Engineering Industry

Germany Essen, Dusseldorf, Dortmund, etc., in the Ruhr Basin are famous centres of machine building in Germany. Solingen is famous for manufacturing cutlery and tools.
France In France, automobiles are manufactured at Clermont Ferrand; textile machinery at Valenciennes and Lille; and heavy machines and locomotives at St. Etienne and Creusot.

Russia Russia is amongst the leading nations in the field of locomoti~es. Voroshilovgrad, Donetsk, Gorky, Kharkov and Omsk are the main centres of locomotive production in the country.

India The machine tool industry which produces machinery for other industries is a specialised field. Ma­chine-tool plants are generally located in long established industrial areas with a ready supply of skilled labour. The developed countries all have good base in engineering industries which include, besides machine tools, electrical goods and electronic systems and transport equipment.

This sector of the industry developed in India only after independence. Before that the country totally depended on imports. Heavy engineering industry produces capital goods and consumer durables and its products can be put into the following categories-industrial machinery or capital goods, power generation equipment, transport equipment, rail equipment, aircraft building and ship building.

Engineering industry requires foundry-grade iron, alloys and special tools as raw materials. These are now produced in almost every part of the country to be used for further fabrication into a wide range of machine tools, machinery and equipment.
The industry also requires skilled labour. This industry is mostly scattered in and around Jamshedpur, Durgapur, Kolkata, Nagpur, Delhi, Chennai, Bhadravati, Bangalore, Mumbai, Thane, Pune, Ahmedabad, Kanpur, Agra, Faridabad and Lucknow.

Industrial Machinery units produce capital goods for iron and steel industry, fertiliser industry, mining, construc­tion machinery, sugar industry, textile industry, agricultural machinery, tractors, pumps, diesel engines, etc. The setting up of the Heavy Engineering Corporation at Ranchi in 1958 gave a major boost to heavy engineering industry in India. The HEC has three projects-the heavy machine building plant, the heavy machine tool plant and the foundry forge plant. Besides meeting the requirements of the steel indus­try, the corporation also produces heavy crushing and grinding equipment, crane equipment, rolling mill equip­ment, mining equipment~ press forging equipment and oil­well drilling rigs. The Mining and Allied Machinery Cor­poration, Durgapur, produces coal mining machinery. The offshore drilling rigs are produced only at the. Mazagaon Docks, while onshore drilling equipment is produced at BHEL, Hyderabad.

The heavy electrical industry comprises equipment used for the generation, transmission, distribution and utilisation of power. It includes items such as generators, boilers, turbines, transformers and switchgears. Most these products are manufactured in the public sector companies like Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) , Heavy Electricals Limited (HEL).

BHEL has set up the following plants/units to augm the production of power generating equipments.

(i) Heavy electric equipments plant This was set up Soviet assistance at Ranipur (Hardwar) with the capae of producing 2.7 lakh KW of steam and water turbines a generators, and 5.2 lakh KW of industrial electric mote
(ii) Heavy power equipment plant It was set up Ramchandrapufilm (Andhra Pradesh) with the capacity manufacture 800 MW of steam turbines and turbo-alter] tors per annum.
(iii) High pressure boiler plant The plant has been set at Tiruchirapalli (Tamil Nadu) with the capacity of prod ing 12 high pressure boilers of a total of 750 MW capaCi boiler fittings and package boiler units per year.
(iv) The switch gear unit Set up at Ramachandrapur, (Andhra Pradesh), this unit produces air blast and miniml oil circuit breakers.

The other units of BHEL include Central Found, Forge Plant, Hardwar; Seamless Steel Tube Pia Tiruchirapalli; and Transformer Plant at Jhansi.

HEL was established at Bhopal in 1956 with I technical collaboration of a British firm. It produces stei turbines, turbo-alternators, transformers, freight locoD tives, capacitors using non-inflammable liquid dielectl control gears, switchgears, railway traction equipment, ~