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Maruti to beef up R&D

CHENNAI: Maruti Suzuki is planning to treble the number of engineers and designers at its R&D (research and development) centre over the next three years.

The company at present has little less than 300 people in its R&D wing. This will go up to 1,000 in three years, according to company sources.

The move on the R&D front comes even as Maruti Suzuki is gearing to roll out a range of new models such as Swift Sedan, A-Star and Splash in the near term. In the medium-term, it is planning to launch the D-segment car, Kizashi.

The company is also stepping up work in alternative fuel segments like LPG, where it has shown success with WagonR Duo and Omni. “Maruti has an aggressive plan for model launches in the next few years. This will require plenty of design and development work for which we have to step up capability,” a top company official said.

S. Nakanishi, Managing Director, had asserted that Maruti was ready to play a major role in Suzuki’s global operations. It is integrating rapidly with Suzuki’s gameplan of launching world strategic models. In the light of the success of world strategic models like Swift and SX4, Maruti will be launching other Suzuki world models like Splash and A-Star in the next 12-18 months.

The A-Star will be manufactured exclusively by Maruti and exported to Europe and the rest of the world. Suzuki Chairman and CEO, O. Suzuki, had always wanted Maruti’s R&D facilities to be on a par with Suzuki Japan.

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