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Indian automobile production increased at a CAGR of 12.2% over FY05-FY13, with a decline in Commercial Vehicle (CV) growth rate during FY09 and FY13. Globally, automotive industry suffered a decline in FY09 due to the global financial crisis and again on a decline in FY12 due to the European sovereign debt crisis. Apart from the global events, there are various internal risks the Indian OEMs need to consider: 1) regulatory risk due to excise duty hikes, decontrol of fuel pricing, etc., 2) market risks due to currency, inflation, interest rates, material cost, 3) industry risks due to increased competition, price war, etc. In this scenario, Indian Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) need to constantly recalibrate their strategies to the changing market dynamics and associated risks. A research on megatrends affecting the Indian CV industry has identified more focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) as one of the megatrend.

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.

General insurance industry has been incurring losses due to their poor underwriting standards and fake third party motor insurance claims. Motor industry accounts for one third of the non-life industry premium. The problems associated with the motor insurance industry are being assessed here with the help of indicators claims ratio, solvency ratio. The steps taken by Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) have been in terms of declined risk pool and increase in Third party premium. Third party premium is calculated based on the past years claim data and a differential pricing mechanism have been adopted. Though different vehicle segments have been addressed by this approach, the individual customer needs are not addressed here. The next level of differentiation should be based on user behavior and insurance companies are now looking at rate differentiation using customer behavior.

Foreign investments help in productive capacity building for both the parent organization in the home country, and in the host country. Preferably, investment promotion is encouraged as it creates biggest impact on creating backward and forward linkages besides generating direct and indirect employment. Commercial vehicle is one such industry. In this knowledge world, organizations can excel or sustain their excellence, only if there is a continuous learning at all levels. To a great extent, competitive advantage of a transnational organization lies in its ability to identify and transfer best practices, core competencies. Knowledge sharing happens in a natural way between its geographically dispersed and diverse units. Technology paves way in creating and leveraging knowledge at an exponential rate, besides reducing time, effort and cost while achieving business goals.

Sustainability in general means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Sustainability has 3 major dimensions-environment, economic and social. Each dimension is governed by many factors. Economic sustainability can be analyzed by using different methods and also using different economic indicators. There is an increasing value of Greenfield investment (Domestic Investment and Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)) projects in the developing economies and transition economies. These nations seem to absorb a major portion of the global FDI. There have been theories stating that FDI can have a positive impact on growth through transfer of capital, technology, innovations, management knowledge. There has been growth in the manufacturing sector in many countries because of FDI and manufacturing sector in turn contributing to economic growth.

Project management has evolved over the years and is adopted by different industries for successful project execution. Many organizations today are moving from a functional structure to a project-oriented team based structure. Also, Project management has progressed from a traditional approach to a modern project management approach and moving towards sustainable project management. Many studies predict a major growth in automotive industry in the developing and emerging markets compared to the developed nations. Many multinational and transnational companies are setting their foot in the developing/emerging economies to leverage the expected growth in the automobile sector, and especially India. These projects are likely to have uncertainties during their planning and execution phases. Here traditional project management approach is not adequate and project management sustainability becomes a challenge.

The goal of any Lean organization is to understand customer value and to focus its efforts to continuously increase it. Lean applies to every business and every process and so is applicable for New Product Development (NPD) in Automobile industry, where the major output is the vehicle part numbers. Part numbers are generated based on the variant tree finalized. Customer requirements, benchmarks and organization assets such as lessons learnt and historical information provide input to the variant tree. Parts numbers for a particular model are generated during the concept Bill of Materials (BOM) stage and after which it exists during the complete product life cycle. Part number generation includes considerable effort by the design team, the validation team, and also includes overheads on the Product Life cycle Management (PLM) system.

System verification and validation is a very important phase of any new electronic product development. For instance, Electronic Control Unit (ECU) needs to be tested rigorously before product launch especially in domains like automotive sector where failures could be nearly unacceptable on field. Since this is a relatively new activity for most of the OEMs in the developing countries, there is a need to establish a process for such testing activities. Establishment and adoption of the process for all ECU testing activities helps in improving the overall efficiency of the development activity. This paper discusses the application of Six Sigma methodology in establishing a process for testing of an ECU. The paper elaborates on the tools used in the different phases and the benefits of adoption of Six Sigma.

Automotive electronics penetration in commercial vehicle segment, in India and other developing countries is in a primitive stage. Introducing a new technology into automobile applications may involve unpredictable failure modes, imposing several risks on the OEM (acronyms are mentioned in the last section) and causing financial losses. Low failure rates can only be achieved by rigorous testing before the product launch. This will help to achieve the required safety and reliability at the system level. The conventional method of testing has some drawbacks. This paper briefs on an advanced testing methodology, as well as a low cost system using telemetry for a trip-information computing unit. It also brings out the merits and demerits on using this system compared to conventional testing as well as other sophisticated testing systems. Towards the end, the paper proposes an alternate testing method and also relevant future works in this domain.