Commercial vehicle-maker Ashok Leyland Ltd. has embarked an on exercise to eliminate processes that bring no value addition to its overall business plan.
The move is in sync with its broader goal to improve operational efficiency, cut overhead cost and beef up vehicle performance, according to Gopal Mahadevan, Chief Financial Officer, Ashok Leyland.
The exercise is currently confined to a few areas, and could be extended to cover more activities later on. It would see stock-checking of the processes involved in fields such as finance, procurement, human resources and quality. The objective, according to him, would be to understand their value-creation in the entire system. Redundant or unproductive layers could be eliminated once a thorough study was conducted, he added.
With Indian customers turning out to be highly price-sensitive and given the intense competition from assorted players from across the seas, the flagship company of the Hindujas — like its peers — is under pressure to stay cost-fit to get its top and bottom line numbers right all the time.
The identification exercise, he said, could be completed in the next few months.
The implementation could happen within the next nine-to-12 months thereafter, he added.
This exercise, he pointed out, is a crucial sub-set of its overall game-plan to focus on its core business i.e. trucks and non-trucks, and emerge as a cost-efficient player.
Ashok Leyland has already quit adjacency activities which were not doing well. The company had entered many an adjacent field in alliance with overseas partners.
