Robots Vs Workers? The answer is the key for India's emergence as exports hub for car manufacturers

End of the day all we want to see is the numbers. Car manufacturers like Hyundai India, Maruti Suzuki India, Honda India roll out cars seamlessly and all the time, we are totally unaware of what is happening behind the scenes. There is a tough battle taking place between the workers and the management who are working to figure out which is the most efficient way to produce cars €“ manually through workers or with the deployment of robots. The workers protests can be clearly heard from the background, but this is not stopping the car manufacturers from increasing the robots which is more than evident from Hyundai India who has increased the robot count ten times over the past. Hyundai India began the operations with mere 30 robots and numerous employees to produce 30,000 units when the operations began in India ten years back.

This has taken a huge leap and the auto major today stands at producing 120,000 units increasing the production by four times. While this is the story from Hyundai India, the other car manufacturers are no less where Ford India has 90 robots working at its factory and Volkswagen India which also believes in automation has 30% of the production automated. But, Indian scenario is way different from the international markets as we see from the picture portrayed by Volkswagen India itself who has retained the automation levels to mere 30% against the 90% seen abroad. This is mostly because there is a huge share of workers protesting against the automation pointing out at every reason why automation has an adverse effect on production. This is not all, quite understanding management seems to be listening all the time giving workers the chance to voice their protests. Hyundai India has a unique program called ACT 302 where the workers proved how better they can be over the robots. Sensibility is the key factor lacking in the robots who are merely designed to carry out their work without doing much value-add for the areas of improvement.

The other issue they raised was the environmental hazards trying their very best to win what seemed to be the losing battle. Finally, there is one factor, the most important negative factor on which both the workers and the cart manufacturers seem to agree upon. With high automation levels comes the increased investment costs which the car makers seem to recuperate over a period of time, but again which is why India is the emerging hub for exports. Thus, the car manufacturers today find the Indian car market ideal for carrying out their exports from India. Hyundai India already has the Hyundai Eon exports in the pipe-line, Mahindra and Mahindra has stretched all the limits to see a whopping exports with Mahindra XUV 500 SUV and Mahindra Xylo MPV, Nissan is already riding high with Nissan Micra exports already and soon to jump on the bandwagon is the Nissan Sunny sedan exports as well.