Hyundai Motors India has flown in over 90 robots from Korea to work on assembly lines in its factory near Chennai. The results are better than expectations.
"We now produce a car in 54 seconds. Earlier, it used to take us three minutes," said G S Ramesh, senior vice-president, Hyundai India.
Up north at Gurgaon, Maruti Udyog, the country's largest car company, has hired 130 women to work in its factory. About a third of them work on the shop floor. And to ensure that it doesn't run out of critical personnel, it has decided to triple its annual executive intake to 300.
With automobile companies set to pump in over Rs 60,000 crore in new capacity, the sector is facing an acute manpower shortage. According to industry estimates, attrition rates in the sector have shot up from 15 per cent to 35 per cent in the last few months in the last few months.
"The cut-throat competition has forced us to re-invent our hiring strategy. In a complete departure from our earlier policy, we are now absorbing fresh graduates who will be trained in-house, "said S Y Siddiqui, chief HR general manager, Maruti.
Multinational automobile companies with Indian operations are luring people by offering them training courses in their overseas facilities. Honda, Toyota and Hyundai have carved out specialised offshore training courses for their employees.
"Mostly, we pick fresh graduates and to make their stay attractive, they are regularly dispatched to our factories in South Korea, Turkey and the US."
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