The Hindu Business Line : Hyundai to set up R&D centre in Chennai

Hyundai Motor Company would be setting up a research and development centre in Chennai within the next two years, according to Dr Jung K. Paeng, Senior Vice-President and Chief Information Officer, Hyundai.

Speaking to the press during Autotech 2006, a conference titled IT for Excellence in Automotive Manufacturing, organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), he said that the company needs a global template solution for its IT support in the supply as well as the demand chain.

Natural choice

He said India is the natural choice because of the country's IT expertise, availability of talent and CMM level 5 certification.

The company would look to employ about 1,000 people, mostly engineers, at the R&D centre. He said that the development of IT solutions for the manufacturing process would help improve the quality and would act as a `digital marker' that would check if each stage of the process is meeting the standard. This in turn would help improve the delivery cycle time, he said.

As far as customer relationship management is concerned, it could help the company increase its leads by about 15 per cent, he said. He added that an integrated inventory solution would help the company access data about its customers whether the unit was purchased directly or through a dealer.

The centre would come up after the second manufacturing facility that the company would be setting up next year. The second facility, coming up at its existing plant near Chennai, would double the current manufacturing capacity of 3,00,000 units per annum, he said. About 50 per cent of this would be exported.

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