Maruti gears up for new challenges at Rohtak

CV Raman reiterates on more than one occasion that Maruti Suzuki’s R&D centre in Rohtak, Haryana, will collaborate with the parent company’s efforts in Japan. “This is not going to be a centre of excellence but is about jointly working with Suzuki,” says Maruti’s Executive Director (Engineering).

The occasion was a visit to the company’s Rohtak facility earlier this week to better understand the work being put in by its engineers. The people here play an important role in the area of safety and ensure that cars produced by Maruti protect the lives of their occupants.

This becomes especially critical in a country, which is right on top of the list in road deaths worldwide. With over 1.5 lakh lives snuffed out on our roads annually, the company is pulling out all stops to ensure that its cars go through stringent crash tests at Rohtak. The Ciaz, Baleno, S-Cross, Ertiga and Ignis already meet offset, side impact and pedestrian safety requirements though these norms are still some months away.

Maruti began its testing cycle in the early phases of Rohtak with one crash (test) per fortnight that has since increased to two per week. The frequency will increase in the coming years as Suzuki farms out more responsibilities to India. In addition, there will be markets such as Africa and Latin America, which will probably be serviced from this part of the world and the testing cycle will inevitably get more rapid.

Nearly 600 of the 700 acres at Rohtak have been set aside for R&D while different types of testing take place on 30 kilometres of track. “Today, technology is changing and advanced engineering work is critical. This is where Rohtak is important for this learning process,” says Raman. It also puts in perspective why Maruti believes it is imperative to go beyond ‘Make in India’ to ‘Create in India’.

After all, it has been an incredible learning journey for the company since the time Suzuki set up shop here over three decades ago. Today, India is its largest producer of cars and expected to play an even bigger global role in the coming years.

Over the years, engineers at Maruti have also evolved intellectually thanks to the exposure they received when sent to Japan and get acquinted with the product cycle at the parent’s plants. The learning came in handy when they began tuning vehicles to Indian conditions with some handholding by Suzuki while in the case of the Vitara Brezza, a lot of work was entrusted to engineers.

“Maruti is working towards a transformation that involves design, durability, safety, infotainment, fuel efficiency and technology,” says Raman. These are thekey pillars of product design, where it is clear that better design improves cash performance with use of high tensile steel at the right places. This is evident in the case of the 857-kg Baleno, which weighs less than the Swift at 965 kg and delivers better fuel efficiency.

Raman says it is this kind of work that keeps the engineers at Maruti energised as they see end-to-end development that is perhaps not possible in other automobile plants. The company has 1,400 engineers all across its facilities and this number will grow as Rohtak wraps up the second phase of its development in March 2019. The total spend by then will have been ₹3,800 crore and it is a fair guess that the number of engineers will have increased substantially too.

“There will be greater collaboration with Suzuki as technology challenges intensify and every product has to be sold in 2-3 markets. It is important to maximise efficiencies,” says Raman. Yet, it is clear that India has surged ahead in volumes even while Japan is struggling to keep pace.

For instance, the April-December sales for Suzuki totalled 2.12 million cars of that India’s share alone was 1.07 million units. Japan was barely 4.41 lakh while Asean was 1.05 lakh units, a fall of nearly 15 per cent. This situation is not peculiar to Suzuki alone but equally true for other Japanese automakers struggling to cope with tepid demand back home while facing the realities of a fragile Indonesian market.

The relevance of the Rohtak facility becomes even more significant in this backdrop. Suzuki has just commissioned a plant in Gujarat that will contribute to the overall target of two million units in India by the end of this decade. The plant will also focus on exports in a big way that means there will be more work happening out of Rohtak with newer models to contend with.

In addition, the country is gearing up for a new regime in safety and emissions, which will all come together by 2020. Companies will have their work cut out over the next three years and Maruti will increasingly bank on its Rohtak facility to keep pace with the change.

What is especially interesting is Suzuki’s proposed alliance with Toyota in the R&D sphere. Thus far, the two companies have been making periodic announcements about the areas they plan to collaborate in but things could change quite dramatically if this translates into a stronger bonding in terms of equity. Will this pave the way for some interesting collaboration between Maruti and Toyota engineers here? There is going to be a lot of action happening over the next few years for sure.

The writer visited the Rohtak facility on an invitation from Maruti Suzuki

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