Auto Parts Asia — August 2017

AutoPartsAsia | AUGUST 2017 | 35

school and staff buses is highly

seasonal and about 60 percent of

the volume happens within four to

five months of the financial year.

Labour retention becomes a serious

challenge. “Our biggest nightmare

year after year is addressing the

seasonality issue. The premium or

coach segment requires a huge shift

in manufacturing culture and process.

For example, in the current market

we cater mainly to school and staff

buses, and we are forced to follow

the batch production system. But for

premium bus and coach building, we

have to implement the line production

system. So batch to line is a massive

shift that has to take place; it calls for

a higher level of tooling and different

skill-sets. For example, the buggy

chassis has to be cut to separate

the front and rear modules before

building the coach on it. It entails a

big transformation at our end in terms

of human resources, layout, line flow

production and infrastructure.”

“The bus and coach industry is

highly customised. Most of the

transport organisations have their

own applications that we have to look

into and consider, compared to the

fairly standardised mass production

of economy school buses. Of course

we cannot standardise to such an

extent that we end up killing our own

flexibility and versatility, which are

our key strengths to cater to a large

target group. We should be able to

customise to meet the demands of

our customers. For example, we got

an order last year from Mahindra’s

VAP (Value Added Products)

business for 1,500 garbage tippers

that had to be made on the Mahindra

Jeeto platform within three months –

development to delivery. We did it. So

you understand how important it is to

be flexible for us to be able to cater to

customer requirements like prisoner

vans, troop carriers and many other

vehicular forms of transportation. That

is why the design and engineering

team is our core competence - they

are the heart of our organisation.

The challenge is to do everything

fast to meet delivery schedules

with the shortest concept-to-market

cycle times. Deliveries range from

three to nine months depending

on the complexity of the required

models. The industry average

here is about two years while it is

roughly three years for the European

manufacturers,” he said.

Electronics

MG Group makes some parts of the

products that go into the Intelligent

Transport System (ITS) like LED

destination boards, passenger

announcement systems, and LED

saloon lights that fit into buses as

well as wiring harnesses. Also, it

makes a unique product called

backlit destination board which is an

automotive compliant replacement for

the crude solutions currently being

used, with a life of 50,000 hours. “The

plan is to offer complete solutions

for ITS and have the whole system

developed in a year or two; that is the

vision,” Kamat said.

Would MGA allow the customers

to customise aggregates, as in the

case of developed markets? Kamat

states that this is a capability he

wants to develop. “Columbus was

our first initiative and the attempt

has been successful in terms of

completing what we had envisaged

as a design; needless to say that the

market will take the final call about

its capability. The trend is moving

to a point where customers would

want to select the engine and other

driveline components but it is very

futuristic as of now. I think it will take

eight to ten years for the industry to

mature to that extent, which would

give us enough time at least to build

that capability in-house, in case the

market desires such application

building.”

Exports

MG Group directly exports to SAARC

countries and Africa and does

deemed exports with OE partners,

like Ashok Leyland, Mahindra, and

Eicher, to more than 20 countries.

“We have manufactured more than

10,000 vehicles for our OEM partners

for export markets. Until last year we

had not focused on the STU business;

that is a key focus area as nearly 40

percent of the bus market caters to

STUs. We have bagged an order of

250 A/c coaches from MSRTC and

are in talks to build KSRTC buses; we

are already working with APSRTC and

Telengana SRTC. So the STUs will

be an important part of our business,

from now on,” Kamat said.

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