ABSOLUTE BLISS would perhaps sum it up best. While the rest of the city frets and fumes its way to work, there’s this one chap who is humming his way to Greater Noida.

Hilal Isar Khan, the manager (IT) at Honda Siel, finds that mornings and evening are the best part of his work day, "for that’s when I get to zip from my residence in Dilshad Garden to the Honda factory in Greater Noida. Part of the credit goes to Greater Noida’s wide roads, and part of it to my wonderful Honda City".

New entrant: Big plans
But life has not always been rosy for Khan, or for his company. Even though it came to India with a tag that acclaimed global presence and standing, Honda has had to trudge its way up the branding ladder in the Indian market.

Honda Siel Cars India (HSCI), a joint venture between Honda Motor Company of Japan and Shriram Industrial Enterprises, was established in India in December 1995. Despite the hype and hoopla surrounding its initial launch, neither the company not its flagship model, the City, managed to go into overdrive. This was also the the time that Maruti Udyog’s domination of the Indian car segment was almost complete. Honda started off with a greenfield plant at Greater Noida. The two partners also agreed to change the equity structure, with the lion’s share moving Honda’s way—today, the equity structure reads 99:1, in favor of Honda.

The total investment envisaged in the project at that time—Rs 850 crore over the first five to seven years, of which Rs 500 crore has been invested so far. The authorized and paid-up equity capital of the company—Rs 360 crore.

Hi-Pack: Packing a punch
So what is it that’s made this journey—from one struggling to establish presence and marketshare to today’s confident and well-known Honda India? A lot of it has to do with grit, planning and determination; a little has to do with IT. Faced with the task of mapping the functional requirements of a discreet manufacturing unit, the in-house Honda Motors IT team developed Hi-Pack (Honda integrated package). With Honda Motors Japan holding the rights for this product, the application is today widely used by most Honda subsidiaries around the world. While Hi-Pack typically services Honda’s four-wheeler businesses worldwide, its two-wheeler units are serviced by a different application, PC-Pack.

Hi-Pack is based on an AS400 platform using DB400 as its database and RPG400 and CL400 as its front-end programming languages. The Hi-Pack software is divided into four main modules:

• Factory System: Takes care of day-to-day production planning;

• Sales System: Takes care of day-to-day car sales;

• Spare Parts System: Takes care of dealer orders; and

• Service System: Provides better services to the customer.

The modules are integrated in such a manner that procurement of material for original equipment and KD is based on production plan, while the company walks the request of quotation (ROQ) route for spares. Services provided to the customer are directly linked to sales.

HITEC Pre-implementation issues HITEC initially conducted training programs for various Service Engineers from the dealer side to improve their skills and certify them based on evaluation in those training programs. There were no consolidated system to maintain those training details and evaluation details of those training programs. As a result a lot of manual effort was involved to maintain those details and analyze the data. This manual system was sometimes erroneous and time consuming due to involvement of manual effort Post-implementation benefits With the implementation of the new system a consolidated maintenance of all training details and automatic determination of trained manpower requirement would be possible. Evaluation and issue of certificate would be enabled through the system reducing man-hours and minimizing manual errors. The system would also be capable to generate various analytical reports to determine effectiveness of training programs

Says Khan: "IT is not a technology process alone, but a tool for better management." Honda Siel has also implemented a new quality improvement system service department. This has a consolidated system which maintains data ranging from fundamental details related to HSCI employees, details of themes, HTR, QIC and QIS. The system also automatically imports part costs using the Hi-Pack application as the backbone and identifies themes and frames for which QIS is already prepared. "This leads to total absence of user interface and manual monitoring," says Khan. At the end of every month, the system automatically generates sets of reports to communicate to dealers and HM Japan, which in turn minimizes the time interval needed to revert dealers with any information.

The HITEC advantage
Another unique feature of the plant is the establishment of the Honda International Training and Education Center (HITEC) for training the Honda Exclusive Authorized Dealership (HEAD) associates, including owners. HITEC has been operational since November 1997, even before the start of commercial production.

"HITEC is used for training dealers and employees, with the processes being similar to those followed in Japan. Dealers are given instructions in detailed manuals on aspects such as the maximum limits for parts inventories, maintenance and repair procedures, tracking lost customers etc. One of the objectives behind using IT in the smallest of processes is to ensure that dealers have the wherewithal to provide total customer care," says Khan.

The system enables dealers to map and capture information such as tracking inventories in remote areas, arranging for a greater number of wipers in a state like Kerala, or suspension equipment in interior India, where the roads may not be hospitable. "The system also helps provide functionality like sales, service and spare parts status," adds Khan.

Amit Sarkar in New Delhi