DICV rewards `excellent’ suppliers
Just weeks after the fifth anniversary of its domestic BharatBenz truck business, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles (DICV) held its annual supplier meet with a focus on Technology, Safety, and Environment. The eighth edition of the event saw participation of more than 500 top representatives of the company’s tier 1 suppliers. For the third time, DICV also honoured its best of the best suppliers that have provided outstanding contributions to the company’s growth in the domestic and the export business.
Erich Nesselhauf, Managing Director and CEO, Daimler India Commercial Vehicles said, “Working with the best partners is a prerequisite for our success. The ideal DICV supplier helps us extend our technology leadership and deliver even more value to our customers, and is keen to pursue growth opportunities in exports.”
As an example of perfectly orchestrated cooperation, Nesselhauf referred to the BS-IV transition in India earlier this year: “Without our suppliers’ support, we could not have unlocked this kind of growth momentum with BS-IV and our all-new heavy-duty truck range. On behalf of DICV, I want to thank all our suppliers for their commitment and their contributions to this success.”
The highlight of the Supplier Meet was the presentation of the DICV Supplier Awards 2017 by Nesselhauf, Amit Sharma, Head of Procurement, and Ralf Mungenast, Vice President Supply Chain Management, in the following categories:-
Excellence in Partnership
Brakes India Pvt Ltd (Winner); Apollo Tyres Ltd (Nominee); and Spicer India Pvt Ltd (Nominee).
Excellence in Performance:
Motherson Sumi Systems Ltd (Winner); MM Forgings Ltd (Nominee); Autotech Industries India Pvt Ltd (Nominee).
Excellence in Innovation:
National Engineering Industries Ltd (Winner); Tenneco Automotive India Pvt Ltd (Nominee); Wabco India Ltd (Nominee).
Exemplary Project Management:
Jamna Auto Industries Ltd (Winner); Bhavani Industries (Nominee); Harita Seating Systems Ltd (Nominee).
Special Category:
Kirloskar Ferrous Industries.
Daimler India Commercial Vehicles’ supplier network includes some 350 supplier partners. Thanks to a high localisation of more than 85%, on some models even more than 90%, most of the suppliers are Indian companies. A significant number of DICV’s suppliers have also captured opportunities to become global suppliers within the Daimler group, exporting top-notch quality within the scope of Daimler Trucks Asia to Japan, and to other units of the Daimler group in Europe, North America and Latin America through DICV’s parts consolidation centre.
DICV is a full-fledged commercial vehicle player in the Indian market. It currently produces and sells above 9 to 49 tons trucks for the Indian volume market, under the brand BharatBenz. Less than five years after its market entry, more than 55,000 BharatBenz trucks were handed over to customers, an unprecedented ramp-up in the Indian CV industry.
Under its bus division, the company produces and sells BharatBenz buses and Mercedes-Benz buses from its manufacturing plant at Oragadam. Trucks, buses and bus chassis are exported to more than 30 markets in the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
The mark of 10,000 exported trucks was crossed in June 2017, less than 4 years after the start of exports. DICV’s state-of-the-art production plant at Oragadam near Chennai spreads over 400 acres (160 hectares) and was opened in 2012. The site is also home to DICV’s headquarters and R&D operations, and features a highly modern test track. DICV has made an overall investment of more than Rs 5,000 crore.