Maruti Suzuki aims to achieve full-body capability

The country’s largest car manufacturer, Maruti Suzuki India Ltd (MSIL), is working towards achieving full-body capability in manufacturing vehicles. This means MSIL will design and develop its models on its own.

Now, MSIL takes the help of Suzuki Motor Corporation of Japan for designing and developing vehicles. MSIL manufactures parts locally and can carry out minor changes and model facelifts.

R C Bhargava, chairman of MSIL, said, “We need to rapidly develop our own capacity to develop and design products. This is an area of priority for us and with the help of Suzuki, we are investing heavily in research and development.”

To achieve full body change capability, through complete in-house designing, development and evaluation of vehicles, the company has already acquired over 700 acres in Rohtak to set up a world-class research and development (R&D) centre and plans to increase manpower to 1,100, from 968 at the end of March 2010.

MSIL would impart induction and training to design engineers, develop world-class proving grounds, crash test facility, wind tunnel laboratory and related testing infrastructure at this new centre.

MSIL invested Rs 173.3 crore in R&D in 2009-10 against Rs 91 crore in 2008-09.

Meanwhile, MSIL announced it would restrict exports to 15 per cent of the total units produced this financial year to meet the growing demand in the domestic market.

“We should concentrate more on the domestic market. To keep our market share, not only should we adequately increase manufacturing capacity, but also remain aware of the changing customer tastes and demands and be flexible in making quick adjustments,” Bhargava said.

MSIL is also concerned about its market share, which dropped below 50 per cent this year, as it failed to meet the demand of fast growing car market, where other carmakers are making inroads.

Between April and July this year, the company exported 50,558 units, out of 335,394 units produced.