Maruti Manesar unit crosses 25 L prodn milestone

For a company that continues to make records on a periodic basis, car market leader Maruti Suzuki’s Manesar facility has crossed the 25 lakh (2.5 million) production milestone this month.  A grey coloured Swift Zxi was the 2.5 millionth vehicle that rolled out from the Manesar B Line.

Spread over 600 acres, the Manesar facility has three plants. These are Manesar A, B and C plants with total annual capacity of 800,000 units. In addition, the Manesar campus also has the diesel engine plant and a suppliers’ park.

Rajiv Gandhi, Executive Director (Plants) pointed out that the Manesar facility achieved the 25 lakh production milestone in 7 years and 8 months. The Manesar plant manufactures some of the top selling models of the country like Swift, DZire and now Celerio, he said. He revealed that this milestone would be the fastest for any car manufacturing plant in the country.

Gandhi had a word of appreciation for the plant workers and  lauded the enthusiasm of employees for their regular and active participation in forums like Suggestion Scheme and Quality Circles. “While we achieve the milestone, we have successfully implemented several ideas from the employees on the important production pillars of productivity, cost, quality and safety,” he acknowledged.

Recently, the Manesar facility received the CII 5S Excellence Award (Northern region) for its best practices in observing the acclaimed Japanese 5S philosophy which improves shop floor productivity and efficiency, stated a Maruti Suzuki press release..

Like the Gurgaon facility, the three Manesar plants have several in-built quality checks and systems to ensure that cars being manufactured here are of top quality. There is a high degree of automation and robotic control in the press shop, weld shop and paint shop to carry on manufacturing work with precision and higher quality. Areas where manual operations are challenging and difficult are supported by automation and robotics, the release added.

Early this year, the company also commissioned a 1mw mono-crystalline photovoltaic Solar Power Plant inside the Manesar facility. Set up at an investment of Rs 10.3 crore, the 1MW photovoltaic solar power plant helps the Company offset CO2 emissions to the tune of over 1200 tonnes annually. The company’s twin facilities at Gurgaon and Manesar have together rolled out over 1.4 Crore (14 million) vehicles cumulatively, the release added.