The Hindu Business Line : Sprucing up its service, the Maruti way

Maruti car owners will shortly get a taste of Japanese efficiency, in after sales service. They need not wait an entire day to get their cars serviced at the Maruti dealers' service stations. They are more likely to be asked to pick up their cars in two hours. Thanks to the company realising that the fund to expand its service network to match its car output in the coming years would be Rs 4,000 crore, according to Mr Jagdish Khattar, Managing Director.

An unrealistic budget, it is almost half of what Maruti Suzuki Ltd has planned to spend on its factories to make more cars — Rs 9,000 crore. By 2010, it hopes to make a million cars a year against 600,000 now. On the roads there are at least five million Marutis. Over 2,200 service stations in 1,131 cities and towns across the country service 25,000 cars a day. Works out to about 70 per cent of the cars sold, while the rest are serviced by local mechanics.

Improving Efficiency

Maruti dealers and their own service stations need to increase capacity but how? To Mr Khattar, it was obvious. If Maruti can set standards of efficiency in producing cars, why not in servicing them? Call up the production engineers from the factories, put together a team to look at what needs to be done in the service stations.

The solution, or at least a promise of one — push the cars out as fast as they come in. Do not let the cars occupy service bays longer than they absolutely have to.

Illustrating the concept to a group of journalists gathered on Thursday at the launch of Maruti's new Zen Estilo, Mr Khattar said at the factory making the car, the bits and pieces that go to make the car are within arms reach. Should it not be same in the service station? Do not let the workers move around to fetch tools and spares, let those come to the workers.

Pilot Project

Also, remember those pictures of workers in the car factory working on one car as it moves down the assembly line. So let more workers attend to different needs of the car being serviced. The result: where at one service bay the mechanics serviced three cars, they now service six. Such results have been observed at a dozen service stations where the concept is being tried out. This is at a pilot project no doubt. But Mr Khattar believes Maruti is on to a good thing. "Extend the concept to the few thousand service stations and even if they do not double the numbers, even a 50 per cent increase is good enough for me," says a confident Mr Khattar.

More Stories on : Customer Relationship Management | Cars | Maruti Udyog Ltd

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