[darklord]

New Delhi: Force Motors plans to set up a manufacturing facility at Chakan near Pune to produce a range of parts including engines, gearboxes and axles with annual capacity of 50,000 sets.

The company's board has approved, as per the circular dated February 7, establishment of factory, Force Motors Ltd said in a filing to the BSE.

http://www.firstpost.com/business/fo...e-2088841.html

[GTO]

Here's a related thread: link.

Force Motors will be supplying engines & gearboxes to BMW. They've been doing so for Mercedes since the 90's!

[Contrapunto]

Its amazing how an OEM supplying critical parts like engines to the most quality conscious brands in the world, learns NOTHING in the process, and for its own products creates crude, low-quality stuff. One does not expect any OEM to pilfer designs, of course, but surely they could have learnt some lessons around designs, quality and engineering discipline?

Force India appears almost Janus like (to use a metaphor), with one face to its marquee customers, and other one frowning at its direct customers and products.

I wonder what kind of organisational structure and corporate culture creates this phenomenon.....

[Autolock123]

News articles mention about the product development and assembly, but role to what extent will Force motors play in product development in critical parts like Engine and gearbox? I doubt if any. Mostly it would be assembly.

Initially, in first half of last year reports, there was going to be a plant in Chennai but now its coming up in Pune.

[GTO]

Originally Posted by Contrapunto

Force India appears almost Janus like (to use a metaphor), with one face to its marquee customers, and other one frowning at its direct customers and products.

I wonder what kind of organisational structure and corporate culture creates this phenomenon.....

Well said . The same, complacent care-a-damn management culture is seen at Premier, Hindustan Motors etc. From the licence raj manufacturers, Mahindra came out of that thinking, and Tata never gives up trying with passenger cars.

Hard to believe the same company that builds engines for Mercedes & BMW also makes this jugaad crap - source:

Originally Posted by Autolock123

but role to what extent will Force motors play in product development in critical parts like Engine and gearbox? I doubt if any. Mostly it would be assembly.

As you rightly said, no role at all. In such a 'contract manufacturing' arrangement, the design, specifications, parts, vendors, systems etc. are all provided by Mercedes & BMW. Force Motors mainly contributes with labour, real estate and a li'l work here & there.

[lurker]

they obviously dedicate their best manpower to their bmw & mercedes engine assembly verticals and those employees that don't make this grade are allocated with their jugaad products division or consumer products division like force 1 and gurkha. I presume more experienced older hands would be entrusted commercial vehicles division like traveller and muv's division.

In short I think the company administration consists of basically a few slavish, colonized minds who worship euro and european needs and would not think twice about fabricating and catering to most outlandish demand provided it come from a euro car manufacturer. Let them ask for a child seat which comes with a special bracket for disposable diapers and force motors engineers would rise to the task. But they could'nt be arsed to make a proper drivers seat or consistent interior fit & finish for their product sold exclusively in India.

[shortbread]

TBH.....contract manufacturing is what Firodia's should stick to.

The best of what Force motors can do is the Force One SUV. A combination of a newish ladder frame, parts bin raid and the rest made up of ready to buy chinese parts!! Reminds u of the jugaad contraprtions of yesteryear Indian auto industry like the Voyager, Rio etc....

When the two wheeler sector was booming and Kinetic had very good experience and market reach in the 'money maker' of the Indian auto industry 'automatic scooters', they chickened out and sold to Mahindra. It hints at their thought process.

They had market domination with the Tempo range of light-medium commercial vehicles. Even the Traveller has been in production for 2 decades in India. One would hope that Force motors is good enough to develop a modern replacement worthy of export on their own by now. Yeah right.....who are we fooling!!