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Maruti to increase automation in Manesar
Posted on 03 Sep 20123,291 Views Comments
Maruti Suzuki plans to bring up Manesar plant at par with the car maker's Japan facilities by ramping up automation in the press shop to 99 per cent
Maruti Suzuki, India's largest carmaker in terms of market share, is automating certain critical production functions in its manufacturing plants that will bring its Manesar operations on par with its hi-tech plants in Hamamatsu, Japan.
Maruti, which operates two plants at Manesar, is planning 99% automation in the press shop where steel sheets are moulded into door frames and then passed onto the weld shop to hinge them onto the body of the vehicle.
"We gradually plan to automate our plants in India to bring consistency in the quality of our cars. We have already started the process at Manesar's first plant to take automation to the maximum possible 99% level, where the press and weld operations would be on par with the second (manufacturing) facility," chief operating officer (production) at Maruti Suzuki, MM Singh said.
The second facility had started operations from September 2011. In due course, all the new lines coming up in Gurgaon would be automated on similar lines, Singh added.
The carmaker has been steadily increasing automating of its plants in India. In over a decade, the company has doubled the number of robots used in its plants to around 1,500. It will add another 50-100 new robots in the older plant at Manesar to increase automation to 99% from the current 90%. But the company did not reveal by when this process will be completed.
Maruti has increased the automation percentage at its three plants in Gurgaon to 60-65%in the past few years. It had stopped operating two manual production lines at Gurgaon in an effort to move to fully automated operations.
Automation has been a sensitive issue for the country's largest carmaker after a series of perpetual worker's strikes last year and massive violence at its Manesar plant on July 18 that left one senior manager dead and 96 employees seriously injured.
Maruti employs over 10,000 permanent employees and contract workers to manufacture around 1.25 millioncars annually. It has been contemplating various means to minimise human intervention as its aims to modernise its Indian facilities, which now churn out more than 50% of parent Suzuki's global output.
Also Read: Maruti bets big on diesel cars
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