MAN Trucks India, the wholly-owned subsidiary of MAN Truck & Bus AG, is gradually building-up resources to develop its engineering centre in Pune into a global competence centre for products aimed at the emerging markets.
At its plant in Pithampur, Madhya Pradesh, MAN Trucks manufactures the heavy-duty CLA range of trucks for the domestic market as well as for exports to Asian, African and CIS countries.
In a recent interaction with Auto Tech Review, Joerg Mommertz, Chairman and Managing Director, MAN Trucks India said it doesn’t make sense to carry out R&D work in Europe for the CLA range, which is made specifically for the emerging markets. While proximity to the market and customers are vital, it also helps because the Indian operations are leaner, thus offering more flexibility with quicker reaction time to meet market demands.
As a strategy, Mommertz said the company is yet to identify any specific area of competence it plans to build here, but “it will be a competence centre for products for the emerging markets, especially the CLA range”. As one of the first important steps towards developing the competence centre, Mommertz said the company has brought back to India an Indian engineer, who had his education as well as experience of working in MAN’s global R&D headquarters.
At this stage, the engineering centre in Pune engages more on application engineering suited to the demands of the Indian requirement. The intention, however, is to be able to contribute more efficient and frugal engineering work for the entire product network of MAN globally. The aim is to do about 80 % of the engineering work for the current and future CLA range here in India, said Mommertz.
This story is from the July 2017 edition of Auto Tech Review.
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This story is from the July 2017 edition of Auto Tech Review.
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