Converging Product Development Processes: A Case of Indian Automobile Industry 2014-01-0285

The automobile industry in India has long been recognized as a core manufacturing sector with the potential to drive national economic growth. India's attraction as a destination for automobile manufacturers has been underscored by the number of new manufacturers entering the country over the last two decades, through FDI. The number of manufacturers has continued to grow in India over the years across vehicle segments. Multinational and Transnational firms may enter a market by different modes of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), either by Greenfield, Mergers & Acquisitions, Joint Ventures or Contract manufacturing. Indian automobile industry currently has a wide mix of home grown automobile companies and foreign invested companies.

In this FDI development and the inclusion of more automobile manufacturers, the product development process of companies also has gone through a change. The cross pollination of product development process has happened between the automobile manufacturing firms. A standard process of product development helps in a number of ways, 1) development cycle time reduction, 2) platform reduction, 3) supplier involvement throughout the development stage, 4) cross functional collaboration, 5) concurrent engineering, 6) work practice standardization, etc. This paper would provide a map of the automobile companies and theirs association with other auto OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturer) in India. This would give an idea on the knowledge flow between the companies. These maps will clearly indicate the convergence of NPD (New Product Development) processes in the auto companies. Recommendations and conclusions would be provided to emphasize on a standardized product development process.