At a seminar held on May 07, 2012, the Senior Vice President of Renault Nissan Automotive India Pvt. Ltd. (RNAIPL), Koji Takei, announced that the group was looking to recruit 10 management personnel from the 'local area'. He further said that the group's policy directs the company to localise the top level management in a period of five to ten years. This seminar was being conducted by Confederation of Indian Industry, Tamil Nadu Industrial Guidance and Export Promotion Bureau as well as Japan External Trade Organisation. The three bodies held this event in order to emphasise the opportunities for business cooperation between Kanagawa Prefecture of Japan and Tamil Nadu.
Takei said that, in the past, the alliance similarly put a team of locally based top managers in place in a few other nations where it works and that this was also put into effective in five to ten years. However, he did not state a time frame for this type of localisation in its domestic operations. The manufacturer recently made Toshihiko Sana the new chief of the company in the country. It also made many other changes in its top level management, and awarded the post of Managing Director of Nissan Motor India Pvt. Ltd., the domestic subsidiary of the Japanese manufacturer, to Takayuki Ishida.
Presently, the car maker employs a total of 5,000 people with an average age of just 24 years in India. Its domestic team includes 457 office workers, 810 quality assessment officers and 4,831 operators.
The Franco-Japanese alliance has set itself a target of producing 2.5 lac vehicles from its manufacturing plant located in Oragadam, which is situated in the vicinity of Chennai, Tamil Nadu. This facility, which was established in the year 2008, rolled out 75,000 units in 2010, though its installed capacity was raised to 1.35 lac units in Financial Year 2011.
Close to 50 per cent of Renault-Nissan's vendors are based in Chennai, even though it does procure materials from suppliers located in Bangalore, Pune and Delhi. Takei commented that the alliance has also asked vendors to start operations in Chennai in order to lower the time needed to acquire materials from remotely located suppliers. The car maker has a supply park where approximately 16 of its vendors have set up units in order to back up the production operations at its Oragadam plant.
Boasting of 85 per cent localisation levels in India as of now, it aims to raise the same to 90 per cent. However, Takei did not say when the company will achieve this target as, according to him, the time period may change due a host of factors.
Earlier, Renault-Nissan said that it will set aside close to Rs. 450 crores in its domestic operations by 2015. Approximately 80 per cent of the amount has already been infused in the country. The car maker has also fulfilled its goal of achieving target production capacity of 4 lac vehicles that was announced in March 2012. On this, Takei quipped, “Our target was to achieve capacity of 4,00,000 units by 2015, but we have achieved it almost three year before itself.”
