At the time of independence in 1947, Ludhiana had only a few units of Machine Tool Industry. There were some units producing hosiery machines, as some hosiery industry was there. After the partition of India, some machine tool manufacturers moved to Ludhiana, from west Punjab and trend to start machine tool industry grew. In the mean time some bicycle parts manufacturing and some' auto parts manufacturing units came up on the scene. They needed machine tools to meet the growing need of mother machines in the country. Therefore entrepreneurs started machine tool producing units. Now Ludhiana is one of the major producers of mother machinery in India.
In the fifties Machine Tool makers formed an association known as "Machine Tool Makers Guild" with Mr. R.C. Kapoor as its President. It functioned for sometime, but some how became defunct after a decade. For some years Ludhiana, remained without any representative body of the machine tool industry. In 1978, a move was made to form an association & Ludhiana Machine Tool Makers Association, came into existence. Till 1986, its membership remained low, but with the reduction in central excise exemption limit, those who considered our association a useless effort, rushed for our membership. And the trend continues till now as we have sizeable number of members.
Ludhiana Machine Tool Makers Association with S. Sewa Singh Premi as its president had done commendable work, even with it limited membership and resources. It organized PUMTEX-I, first Punjab Machine Tool exhibition in November 1982, which was a great success and generated business worth crores. It also held various seminars on machine tool making techniques at that time. The association was able to get NSIC Ltd office opened in Ludhiana and also pleaded for a design institute like CMTI to open its branch in Ludhiana. This however, ended up by establishing IMTD at Batala due to political strings.
This association has been voicing problems of machine tool industry in small scale sector and had successfully got scrapped Government of India proposal to impose compulsory pre shipment export inspection. It has also got its own office building and necessary infrastructure to keep its members aware of latest trends in machine tool technology. It was renamed recently as "Ludhiana Machine Tool Manufacturers Association and got registered under Societies Act (non profit making). Details of its present office bearers and members are given on the following pages.
