Continental began operating in India in 2008. How's been the journey so far?
Continental recognises the potential of the Indian automotive market as well as India's emergence as a hub for high quality engineering talent. Since our establishment in 2008, we have made significant investment in the country. See our milestones listed in the box to get a fair view of our journey so far.

How many plants do you operate in India? Where are they located?
Continental has nine plants in India-of these five are automotive and four are rubber plants. We have two automotive plants in Manesar, a ContiTech plant in Sonepat, Haryana and tire plants in Modipuram and Partapur. In the East, Continental's 100 percent subsidiary Phoenix Conveyor Belts India has operations in Kalyani, near Kolkata. In the West, we have two Powertrain plants in Pune,  Maharashtra and we have an electronics plant as well as our R&D center in Bangalore, Karnataka. Recently we opened an office in Chennai to support our customers better.

What are yours plant doing to build quality management within the manufacturing system?

Understanding our customer expectations is vital towards strengthening our quality management system. Globally, our focus is on doing the right things right the first time every time, so we can avoid additional costs for the company. What we have to avoid is delivering products which do not comply with the requirement or are faulty. In this case, we talk about non quality or failure. Customers don't pay for this and further it leads to additional cost of replacement, warranty, compensation and additional internal resources for handling the complaints.

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