Beat this-maruti 800 safer than a mercedes

An interesting article as to how maruti did a turnaround from a los making company to being India's largest passenger car manufacturer,

India’s largest carmaker has seen the low of a Rs 269-crore loss in 2001 and the dramatic turnaround last year when the firm posted profits of Rs 1,500 crore.

Jagdish Khattars[MD maruti udyog's] answer:
I think that loss was the best thing that could have happened to Maruti. Because till then we were a dominant player and dominance brings about a certain amount of complacency. That loss really shook us up and we took advantage of that. And I think it hurt the ego of our employees, too. I remember we had a meeting of 200 of our supervisors. We met them in the morning and put them into 10 groups and asked them how they could bring about improvement in productivity and cut down costs. We said we (the directors) would come in the evening and you give your suggestions. The people came with brilliant ideas as to how to improve productivity and cut costs. We complimented them and asked them to implement what they had suggested and this happened across the company in various areas. So we started with a loss and used that opportunity to turn the company around. And after that we had a strike. Seventy per cent of our workers were away for three months. But on the third day, we were producing at 100 per cent capacity. I went to the vendors and told them: if we stop production, you lose business. They sent their own people. We have a trainee scheme and we recalled those trainees because they had worked for 10 months with us. Two thousand people stayed within the factory for three months. We had Daler Mehndi coming in the evenings for music and recreation for the people working on the floor. After that, we had two Voluntary Retirement Schemes through which 2000 people left. So it was a good wake-up call and that’s why we are here today.
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You said that road safety is an important part of your strategy but as an observer, one finds that Maruti 800 and Omni are probably two of the most unsafe cars with almost no safety features.

This is the difference between perception and reality. No car can run on the roads unless it meets the safety norms. Maruti 800, according to people who have studied, it is as safe as a Mercedes, if not safer. Some people said if Princess Diana was in an 800, she might have been saved.

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And what if she was in an Omni van?

Same with the Omni.

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What ails the American car industry? Why are they taking such a beating from the Japanese?

I think the Japanese have their eyes to the ground and they tailor-make their products according to the needs of their consumers. In 1976, I saw huge cars as taxis in New York. Going from India where we had Ambassadors, I thought: “Such a huge car and four people sitting in the middle with no luggage at the back. The space is all wasted!” There were no constraints of fuel efficiency and cost and Americans were living in their own world. The Japanese saw an opportunity there. The tide was changing and Americans did not change. But the consumer can change his mind very quickly.

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Read the whole article here:

Indianexpress