Earlier in August this year, when Maruti Suzuki launched their new Swift hatchback in India, thousands of people flocked to Maruti dealers in order to book the new Swift. Within less than a month from its launch, Maruti Suzuki had collected over 100,000 orders for their new Swift.
At the same time, workers at Maruti Suzuki plant had once again started agitating, their second already this year. This time the reason for their agitation was over signing a good conduct bond which Maruti Suzuki management wanted their workers to sign before resuming work.
In all Maruti Suzuki workers have gone on strike three times this year. This has resulted in a revenue loss of over Rs 1500 crores and a production loss of 50,000 cars, stated Maruti Suzuki. But, India’s largest car manufacturer is now back on track and has stated that they expect to clear pending orders of Swift hatchback by April 2012.
Mr M M Singh, Managing Executive Officer, Maruti Suzuki said, “We expect to make around 18,000-20,000 Swift units a month as soon as the second line at Manesar becomes fully operational by January. It should take four-five months to clear the backlog. By January, the second line will have no bottlenecks, so I would expect capacity to go up to 800-900 units a day, depending on the demand.”
“We need more manpower and have to develop the right skills to handle the new machines. We are hiring from many places while shifting workers across other lines. Why should we incur higher costs and we would like to keep everything at one place as transporting welded body frames is expensive,” Mr Singh added.
