With the domestic automart showing signs of correction, the country’s largest car maker Maruti Suzuki India (MSI) is looking at strengthening its back-end operations by asking vendors to increase efficiency, besides building their own research and development capabilities.
The company is also in the process of setting up its own India-specific R&D centre and is aiming to design independent full bodies of different models.
“We are now extending our scope of activity to ensure that tier-2 vendors also adopt modern systems, which will increase productivity and reduce costs,” Maruti Suzuki India Chairman R C Bhargava said in its Annual Report for 2008-09.
The company’s thrust to increase quality and efficiency would benefit the small and mini scale industries, he added.
To cut input costs, MSI has introduced– One Component One Gram initiative, in which the weight of every component is reduced by a single gram, the report pointed out.
Bhargava said the company is also in the process of acquiring land to set up an India-specific R&D centre to design and develop small cars.
“At the same time, we are persuading our suppliers to establish their own engineering capabilities to design and test products, as otherwise our own efforts cannot be fully successful,” he said, adding MSI would also support the vendors in this regard to the extent necessary.
The report further said MSI is targeting to develop independent full body design capability.