The year 2013 was the ‘year of offensive' for Mercedes Benz India. And how? At a time when the automotive sales numbers have been spiralling southwards, the three-pointed star clocked an impressive 32 percent growth and also regained the number one slot in the luxury car segment. A key factor in this success was the launch of new products and this could happen because of a renewed focus on manufacturing.
Now, Merc has started 2014 with another successful launch and aims to make it the ‘year of excellence' to consolidate its leadership position. The Machinist's first cover story (in the magazine's revamped format) brings out interesting details right from the man himself - Eberhard Kern, MD & CEO, Mercedes-Benz India Ltd. Kern explains the transition from ‘offensive' to ‘excellence'.
"Yes, we at Mercedes-Benz India have committed ourselves to make 2014 as the ‘year of excellence' as we feel that, as the most admired automotive brand in India, we need to set benchmarks in the luxury segment. We are sure that our strategy shall eventually lead to better customer satisfaction and loyalty eventually leading to our profitable growth in India," he says.
Mercedes' production facility in Chakan is recognised as one of the best CKD assembly facility within the Daimler world. Kern highlights this fact and says that this facility stands key to the car maker's business operations. "We are proud of our facility," he says matter-of-factly. At present, the production facility is undergoing expansion and Mercedes-Benz India has committed an additional investment of Rs250 crore towards this.
The current production capacity is 20,000 units and this will be doubled by end of Q1 2014. "The production facility has a world-class paint shop using cutting edge technology and this plays a vital role in our local value addition of our products. The facility will play an important role in our ‘year of excellence' strategy. We will be rolling out the S-Class from our manufacturing facility soon," he says.
Mercedes-Benz Research and Development India (MBRDI)
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In 2012 alone, MBRDI (headquartered in Bangalore) filed over 50 patents for innovations in automotive development. MBRDI has been involved in many areas of Daimler's R&D engagements including component development of parts and modules for the new generation cars from Mercedes-Benz. The integral seats of the newly launched A-Class and the seats of the new CLA are a few examples of end-to-end projects lead by the MBRDI team. MBRDI has been involved with some of Daimler's cutting-edge projects. A case in point is the company's leadership towards ‘Human Body Modeling (HBM) System'. The HBM simulation under development and testing at MBRDI, considers ‘almost' every possible combination of accident variables from biomechanics and the physical properties of human tissues to accident statistics and the physics of crash situations. HBM is a key pillar supporting Daimler's vision of accident free driving. According to Kern, interior and exterior component design is a specialisation of MBRDI Pune which leverages the presence of local suppliers. The Pune office of MBRDI ensures that proximity to the sales organisation and customer inputs are seamlessly captured and integrated through feed-forward loop into future development of products. Design teams within MBRDI are actively involved in design, development and modelling of various subsystems such as Chassis, BIW (Body in White), CIW (Cabin in White), Power train, Suspension, Interior and Exterior components, Prototyping, Regionalization and Localization. The CAE team at MBRDI is one of the largest teams within this Daimler function. Various groups within the CAE team work extensively in the area of evaluating various vehicle functions such as that of crash, stiffness, strength, durability, powertrain, NVH (Noise Vibration Harshness) Body in White & Sheet Metal Forming and computational fluid dynamics simulations. The Electrical and Electronics departments within MBRDI have competencies focused towards Model-Based-Development (MBD) topics, Embedded Software Design (complete V-cycle) and SW Architecture Knowhow, Embedded Hardware (ECUs) knowhow and Simulation. |